JJ#6 - Ulysses - Episode 4: Calypso
#6 Calypso
Guide to support Ulysses.
Notes:
Red = Various Language Used and It’s Translation
Orange = Word Description
- = Guided Plot
Noted Characters:
Leopold Bloom: The main character of this story. We find that Bloom has a fascination with excrement and the anus. He is extremely giving to his wife as she lays in bed this entire episode while he serves her. Bloom carries a potato around for good luck, sells ad space for the Freeman’s Journal, insinuates Ireland is full of drunks, and is a “horny” gentlemen. He day dreams in this episode about ladies “hams”. Bloom is seen as an outsider. His father is a Hungarian Jew and mother is Irish. He is our Odysseus.
Molly (Marion) Bloom: Leopolds wife. She comes off as self centered. She seems to be hiding something from Bloom as a letter comes and she stuffs it under her pillow, deeming to hide it from Bloom. Molly is deemed an outsider as well. Raised in Gibralter with her military father Brian Tweedy. Never knew her mother. She is a voluptuous woman that is desired by men. Molly is a singer by trade.
Milly (Millicent) Bloom: The Blooms daughter. She is 15 and sent her to live in Mulligan to learn photography. Bloom receives a letter from her in this episode. She is becoming interested in boys and specifically Alec Bannon.
Rudy Bloom: The son of the Blooms. Rudy died soon after birth. Bloom has a hard time and often thinks of the what if’s if Rudy were alive.
Blooms Cat: The Blooms have a cat and Leopold is awfully fond of.
Patrick (Paddy) Dignam: We find out that Dignam has passed away a few days ago. Quite suddenly. It seems as though this was from drinking. Toady is his funeral, which Bloom is attending.
Hugh (Blazes) Boylan: Boylan manages Molly’s singing career. He is well known throughout Dublin and well liked. It seems as though he is more than Molly’s manager and having an affair with her.
Mr. O’Rouke: Appears only briefly. When Blooms leaves his house to buy breakfast, and walks down he street past Larry O’Rouke’s pub. He see’s Larry there and decided to say help. He is bald.
Gretta Conroy: (“The Dead” in Dubliners) - Molly mentions Gretta in this episode, asking Leopold what she is up to. In The Dead, Gretta is married to Gabriel. Gabriel hates Dublin, Gretta does not. She finds Gabriels interested ridiculous. Gretta seems to be focused on a past lover who dies, and cannot give her new love, the passion required.
Location: 7 Eccles Street, The Blooms house. Bloom does leave and walk down the street to get meat for breakfast, but returns home. This house was demolished in 1967 to make room for a hospital.
Odyssey:
Zeus sends Hermes to instruct Nymph, Calypso to free Odysseus and let him go home. He was imprisoned on her island for 7 years as she wanted him to be her lover. Odysseus is prepared for his voyage and sets out. He is intercepted by Poseidon with thunderstorms. Athena calms the storms and sustains Odysseus which he makes it to land.
Themes:
Organ: Kidney
Art: Economics (Household)
Symbol: Nymph
Technique: Narrative
Inner Organs of Beast and Fowls Pgs 66-70
Introduction of Leopold Bloom
He likes eating internal organs of animals
He is working on making her (Molly) breakfast
Dull and squat = “I’m a little teapot”
Bloom’s cat introduced and Bloom is imagining his cat’s inner dialogue
White Button = Anus of the cat
He goes on to describe and think of his cat.
Does Bloom have pleasure in pain?
Bloom plans to go to the store while his food is cooking and tells Molly.
"Licking the saucer clean” = Jack Spat Nursery Rhyme
“Thin bread and butter” = Little Tommy Tucker Rhyme
Bloom is up early trying to support Molly while she is still in bed. He knows her wants without even asking.
What does this say of this relationship?
References a bed he bought at a auction in Gibraltar.
He even worries of opening the wardrobe but doesn’t as he knows it’s creaky and will wake her.
Bloom leaves the house and the narrator places heavy description around the city and happenings
Nig = No Good
We learn Bloom sells ads for a newspaper
We learn of a funeral Bloom is attending today - Dignam.
Ahbeesee Defeegee Kelomen Opeecue Rustyouvee Doubleyou Pgs 70-73
Bloom greets Mr. O’Rourke
Bloom crosses paths with Irish folks who we in the city, from the country. He ponders where they get all their money to come to the city and drink. - Ireland has a drinking problem.
He stops and sees a woman in line at the butcher and he observes her “vigorous hips”.
His mind then goes to Mr. Wood (Employees the girl in front of Bloom) and his wife. He visualized her whacking a carpet on the clothesline and her “ crooked skirt swings at each whack” - Dirty ming - Horny lad.
His thoughts take him to the cattle-market and back to the skirt.
She goes through the line, Bloom gets his food fast so he can “catch up and walk behind her, behind her moving hams (butt). “Pleasant to see first thing in the morning.”
Bloom is lustful and weakened but pretty women and know they don’t understand this feeling of being weak for beauty. He even creates a fantasy in his head about a woman lost in the woods, needing a big sausage from a policeman.
Bloom reminisces as he walks.
Captivity to Captivity Pgs 74-75
Bloom dives into Jewish history. “The oldest people. Wander far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere.”
Bloom arrives home and picks up mail - 2 letters and a card.
One letter = Mrs. Marion Bloom - ill mannered of the time should be labeled as Mrs. Leopold Bloom, eludes to some sort of controversy. Bloom heart slowed. Some marriage issue must be a foot.
Another from his daughter, Milly Bloom to Leopold.
And a card for Milly
Bloom glances back as he raises the window blind. Sees Molly tuck the letter under the pillow - Affair
Bloom seems to be a nice guy catering to Molly. He seems he is worked over. She tells him to hurry to make her tea.
Between Her Large Soft Bulbs Pgs 76-80
Bloom opens his letter and through of times previous. He poked his kidney and brought Molly’s (food) & tea
Bloom checks out his wife’s breasts
Bloom notices the opened letter under Molly’s pillow and finds out its from Boylan.
Molly is a singer
Bloom is going to a funeral
Molly wanted to ask Bloom a word from her book - Metempsychosis - soul after death.
Molly asks Bloom to get her a new book.
Bloom remembers his kidney is burning and gives the burnt part to the car.
Blooms opens Milly’s letter.
Molly Pgs 81-86
Yesterday was Milly’s 15th birthday
Molly & Bloom has a son, Rudy, but he didn’t live, he would be 11. Bloom re-reads the letter.
Bloom exits the house with a paper to use the outhouse. On his way out, he thinks through gardening and soil fertilization.
White monday - the day after white Sunday - 7th Sunday after easter.
Bloom finishes reading his paper in the outhouse and exits.
Leopold needs the paper to check the funeral time. Dignams funeral.
Calypso Reflections:
We are introduced to Leopold Bloom this episode. We start to gather assumptions about who he is, his relationships with his wife and kids. Bloom seems to be an easy going guy, serving his wife, loves his daughter and misses his son. He is a horny man, representing the normal man, everyman, everywhere. Reviewing how men and women are different and never understand the urge and beauty of a women. He recognizes Dublin as a drunk town, a place to drink. There is some dynamic, we are unaware of, between Bloom and his wife and an affair.
Literary Works of Interest:
Mitchel de Montaigne - Apology for Raymond Sebond - (1568)
Frederick Diodati Thompson - In the Track of the Sun; Readings from the diary of a Globe Trotter - (1893)
Samuel Lover - Legends And Stories of Ireland - (1787-1868)
Matchams Masterstroke (Joyces Own Writing) - Column writers paid to be in.
References:
Gifford, Don, and Robert J. Seidman. Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses. Univ. of California Press, 2009.
Joyce, James, and Laurence Davies. Dubliners. Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2013.