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Content JA M E S JOYCE'S ULYSSES:
A CELTIC C O U N TER SIG N T O TH E O D Y S S E Y
by
Ruth A nn Mary Raftery
A Dissertation Presented to the
FA C U LTY O F TH E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L
UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillm ent of the
Requirements for the Degree
D O C T O R O F PHILO SO PHY
(Engli sh)
September 1983
UMI Number: DP23093
All rights reserved
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
TH E G RADUATE SC HO O L
U N IV E R S IT Y PARK
LOS A N G ELES, C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7 Q
B
p i 3 °j
This dissertation, written by
RUTH ANN MARY RAFTERY
under the direction of h.&x... Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillm ent of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
Date November 29, 1983
DISSERTATION
airman
i i
Table of Contents
Page
Fo rew o rd i i i
Chapter
I. Joyce and the Revival. . . . ..........................................................1
I I . Joyce and the Materials: Zimmer, the Couvade,
and your Bitch of a M other................................................................... 68
I I I . Stephen: Telemachus, Cormac, Cuchulain - or
Usurpation and Warrior Retribution ........................................... 136
IV. Odysseus, E lijah , Mananaan: Heroism, G uilt,
and Ambiguity in the Male Principle ......................................... 204
V. Penelope, Gea-Tellus, Maeve. - A Metempsychosis
of Female Principles . ....................................................................... 276
Bibliography.......................................................................................... 342
i i i
Foreword
The following study of Ulysses is an investigation of Jam es
Joyce's interpretation and use of Celtic mythology. While i t offers a
somewhat radical approach to reading Ulysses, the study is not designed
to take issue with, or supersede, the varied scholarship already sur
rounding Joyce's work. Rather, i t is intended to suggest a new ap
proach, an additional perspective through which som e of the unanswered
questions raised by Joyce's works--and som e of the scholarly dilemmas
generated by them—might be resolved. This study seeks to isolate
and delineate Joyce's "Irishness" in its larger mythological expres
sion: i t traces the ra c ia l, Cel tic symbolism rather than the nation
a lis tic surface allusions. Because c ritic a l attention to this aspect
of the work has been slig h t, the c ritic a l materials surrounding Ulysses
have been addressed in a general rather than specific manner. C ritical
works cited throughout were chosen for their representative value on
major issues of interpretation: the intent here is not to refute, but
to augment and/or synthesize what has gone before. Joyce's expression
of his Irishness through Celtic symbols is a rich and important
component in our understanding of the whole canon; a substructure
which, i f properly analyzed, m ay lead us to understand that i t is not
useless to search for a philosophy in the works of Joyce. This study
attempts a preliminary overview of symbolic patterns, and suggestive
authorial attitudes in Ulysses which promise a rich fie ld for closer
and more elaborate analysis.
In attempting to define and analyze Joyce's relationship to (and
u tiliz a tio n of) his heritage, the present author has attempted to es
tablish som e basic premises for assessing and defining Joyce's Iris h
ness. Primary am ong them is the assumption that Joyce's concepts of
his heritage were derived mainly from the work of the Iris h Revival.
Joyce grew up in a Dublin reverberant with the arguments of the Revival,
and i t appears that he absorbed the atmosphere of that Revival quite
as m uch as he deliberately studied its productions. Therefore, this
study has sought to refer to popular Revival documents as m uch as pos
sible, relying on works that would have been readily available and fre
quently alluded to during Joyce's youth and young manhood.
Because one is never precisely certain about the pace and extent
of Joyce's language acquisition, every e ffo rt has been m ade to re s tric t
Joyce's sources to what was available in English translation during
his youth and before the publication of Ulysses. This includes not
only the Irish cycles themselves, but German language documents and
position papers. For instance, in the case of Heinrich Zimmer, the
Matriarchate theory is reproduced from Henderson to demonstrate both
vv
the English language a v a ila b ility , and the Revival's awareness, of
the German scholar's work.
In the matter of the Irish cycles themselves, particularly the
Ulster cycle and Tain, references to modern texts have been used for
the convenience of the reader where they do not d iffe r substantially
from the e arlies t Revival translations. Bowdlerized or substantially
altered texts or interpretations are identified as such. I t is simply
easier for the contemporary reader to refer to Cross and Slover's
basic texts, or Kinsella's Tain, and asr.these excellent modern works
are based on Revival forerunners and .provide precise references to
source translations, they are reliab le tools.
The matrix of this study is , of course, the Irish cycles and the
Matriarchate theory for interpreting them. Indeed, i f the following
pages at times seem to be using Ulysses to explicate Celtic myth,
rather than the reverse, i t is so because Joyce's text invites that
approach. The novel its e lf is an exercise in radical interpretation,
designed to confound the Revival's Cyclopean conclusions on the meaning
of the myths. Because the scope of the current study is necessarily
restricted, i t sometimes touches a rb itra rily on issues which, Celtic
scholars would ju stly argue, require much deeper analysis. However,
the anthropological truth of the Matriarchate interpretation is not
the central concern here: rather, Joyce's acceptance of the m atriar
chal interpretation is the object of demonstration. In a ll cases,
the interpretation of Celtic myth, speculations on its evolution,
— 71
V I
Choice of versions, and reordering of sequences have been guided by
clues and colorations that Joyce's work lends them. In b rie f, i t is a
general assumption of this study that Ulysses simultaneously achieves
two ends in terms of Celtic myth: f ir s t , the myths "forge" a meaning
for the novel: second, the novel "forges" a meaning for the myths.
Together, both aspects serve to delineate the "conscience" of the Cel
tic race.
Though i t is not the purpose of the present study to judge the
anthropological accuracy of a matriarchal interpretation of the Celtic
heritage, confronting Joyce's conclusions is unavoidable. Clearly,
Joyce proceeded on the assumption that "Joyce a raison. Joyce a
regione." O ne always hesitates to enter the labyrinth or authorial
intent, but in this instance the evidence is persuasive that Joyce
intended his major works not merely to resurrect the ancient heritage,
but to rev ita lize i t in such a way as to force the matriarchal in te r
pretation to subsume the Revival's popular heroic, or patriarchal,
interpretation. Ulysses, lik e a traditional Druidic work, is a vast
and in tricate riddle. I t is designed, through its elaborate network
of allusions, to force the readers (particularly Joyce's Revival
compatriots) to turn back to the Celtic heritage for an answer as to
why the novel fa ils to p a ra lle l—indeed, confounds?-its much-bruited
model, The Odyssey. Unlike the heroic Greek model, which finds its
resolution in the actions of Odysseus, Joyce's novel finds its reso
lutions in the ruminations of his Penelope. In Molly Bloom Joyce
vi v
deliberately bodied forth not only what has been aptly termed the
“reconciling symbol" for himself and his book, but the-’"indispensable
countersign" to the patriarchal heroic tradition represented by The
Odyssey. The contrast, in proportion and emphasis of the female ro le,
between Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses is deliberately provoking,
requiring the reader to understand a great deal through suggestion
rather than direct statement: but more, challenging the reader to
discover the reconciling factors in the Celtic myths which inform
Molly's character. For i t is fin a lly in the tension between p a triar
chal and matriarchal traditions, or "conscience," that the resolution
of Ulysses m ay be found.
I f , as i t has been suggested, Joyce found a resolution of his
personal conscience in creating the "reconciling symbol" of Molly Bloom,
he quite obviously was not satisfied with the resolution of his (and
Stephen's) lite ra ry quest;— a resurrection of the racial conscience.
W hen his readership failed to grasp the clues, when Ulysses failed to
in itia te a "ricorso" of the C eltic cycles am ong his Revival contem
poraries, Joyce set himself the arduous task of restating the basic
matriarchal interpretation once more in Finnegans Wake. Resurrection
or revival is the whole theme of Finnegans Wake, and in i t Joyce
further elaborated his theories and assumptions on the Celtic heritage.
Using Zimmer as a sounding board, Joyce once again created a vast
domestic canvas, a contrapuntal study of matriarchal and patriarchal
vi i i
visions, but confined them to the two 'barbaric1 races of Europe —
the Celtic and the Teutonic. This time he allowed the C eltic materials
to lie directly on the surface in overt references to Celtic romance,
local deities, law. He nam ed his hen "Biddy of the Dorans," a direct
allusion to McSlayt's genealogies where the Deorans are nam ed as last
keepers of the intact Brehon Law. And the Brehon Law, in this context,
is the last codified expression of the racial conscience. Whatever its
more or Jess insistent pointing to Celtic myth, Finnegans W ake reaches
the sam e symbolic anthropological and/or psychological conclusion sug
gested in Ulysses. Both works end in the sam e configuration - - sleep
ing male and ruminating female: here i t is the decipherment of the
hen's obscured and tattered testimony, and that alone, which m ay rescue
the patriarch from his long sleep of g u ilt. Despite its technical
fireworks, Finnegans W ake is in som e ways a more obvious book than
Ulysses, but Joyce's purpose remained the same. The two major works
dem and from the reader a close study and re-evaluation of the Celtic
materials in order to unriddle fu lly the allusions in Joyce's texts.
I t is the Celtic cycles, and th e ir obscured matriarchal meaning, that
Joyce was determined to resurrect.
In the broader spectrum of fin-de-siecle "anthropologizing,"
Joyce appears to have pitted the entire strength of his genius against
the popular tide of Spenglerian, Neitzsehean, Freudian, and Jungian
analyses of Western man. The contest Joyce chose to wage was not
ix
restricted to the Irish Revival, nor to the Irish heritage as a na
tional en tity. The novels, in th e ir multi-mythical and m ulti-lingual
complexity, work always to demonstrate that the Celtic heritage is
European — Western in the largest sense. Joyce's concern was the
modern European mainstream, and the ramifications of his anthropologi
cal "truths," particularly on the prevalent concepts of m en like
Freud and Jung. Jung’ s much-quoted comment on Ulysses, "the devil m ay
know so m uch about the psychology of women, I confess I do not," m ay
yet prove to be a,greater irony than Jung supposed: i t appears that
Joyce earnestly hoped to prove i t so.
I t remains, of course, for modern Celtic scholars and anthropo
logists to weigh the value of Joyce's matriarchal interpretation in
philosophic terms. For Joyce scholars, simply unravelling the rich
profusion of clues and allusions to Celtic sources should prove a
fru itfu l and entertaining challenge for a long while to come.
1
Chapter 1
Joyce and the Revival
- You . . . suspect . . . that I m ay be important because I
belong to the faubourg.Saint Patrice called Ireland for short . . .
- but I suspect . . . that Ireland Bust be important because i t
belongs to me." The Irishness of Stephen Dedalus provided Jam es Joyce
with the dramatic fulcrum for two of his major works; and, true to
Stephen's gradiloquent prediction, the works of Mr. Joyce.have pro
vided Ireland a degree of lite ra ry importance she certainly would not
have without him. Stephen's Irishness (though perhaps not its reci
procal — Ireland's 'Stephen.ishness') has provided in its turn a fu l
crum for countless c ritic a l studies and interpretations for half a
century. Not so the:Irishness of James Joyce: despite the extreme au
tobiographical’ nature of Joyce's writings — or perhaps because of \
i t — c ritic s have tended to ignore direct confrontation with the na
ture and substance of the Joyce-Ireland reciprocity, concentrating
instead on the 'universal' Joyce; the Joyce of continental influences,
of European allusions. While a rela tiv e ly small number of a rtic le s ,
notes, and commentaries on Joyce's use of Irish materials has been
2
generated (particularly surrounding Finnegans Wake), no full-length
study has yet been done which examines the famous e x ile 's relationship
to his nation and race exclusively and in depth.
Within the past few years, however, several books have appeared
to suggest that the time is at hand for giving som e serious attention
to the question of Joyce's Irishness in conjunction with that of
Stephen Dedal us. Despite the widely divergent attitudes and motives
of the authors, three of these, Ellmann's Consciousness of James Joyce,
Benstock's Undiscover'd Country,.and Kain's Dublin, share a co m m o n
ambience. There is a restive quality about these books, a subtle but
perceptible m ood of frustration; a sense that, despite years of
patient analysis and exegesis, the major works of Joyce have yet to be
unriddled — they have yet to "cry tink at the close." The two most
indefatigable Joyceans, Ellmann and Benstock, re-examine and r e f it a ll
of the fam iliar puzzle-pieces yet again: the famous anecdotes, the
relationship with Yeats, with Nora, with Aquinas and Shakespeare, the
separation or lack of sam e between Joyce and Stephen, the role of the
Homeric key - - a ll are carefully reappraised in search of new insights.
Benstock offers an elaborate .close reading of the texts for further
elucidation of the relationship of Joyce and Stephen. Ellmann reviews
the contents of the Trieste library for new correspondences between
the Homeric Key to Ulysses and Joyce's sources. Kain carefully re
constructs the Dublin m ilieu, s iftin g i t for more clues to the sources
3
of Joyce's w it, ideas, and attitudes. In the process, there emerges a
growing willingness to discuss Joyce as an Irishman, and to consider
his works in the lig h t of an Irish trad itio n . I t is as though, a fte r
many years of stressing the universal Joyce, the Joyce of the European
mainstream, that sense of an elusive riddle has turned the search in
ward once more, away from the world to which Stephen hoped to fly .
C ritic a lly , w e seem to be coming fu ll c irc le , back to an examination
of the particular, rather than the universal Joyce. Benstock, i t is
true, studies Joyce's Irishness for the purpose of demonstrating the
tension between Joyce's inherited world and the world of his creation.
His conclusions are the traditional ones which reject the Irish in
favor of the Continental a rtis tic allegiances. Richard Ell man, on the
other hand, is now w illing to consider Ulysses in part as "a p o litic a l
act" (p. 89) by an Irishman deeply concerned with the p o litic a l and
economic fate of his nation. Kain's study reaches rather more intense
'Iris h ' conclusions: "Joyce fin a lly . . . was to return, lik e Yeats,
to humble f i l i a l piety . . . Both writers share the ancient b e lie f that
there is a uniquely Celtic insight, a quality evoked by Iris h lite r a
ture and legend. Although Irish in origin , this s p irit is universal.
H e who could read its meaning might possess a sacred book and know the
soul of m an" (p. 184). The ambiguity of this conclusion unfortunately
leaves us once more between "Irrland 's s p lit l i t t l e pea" and the vast
bulk of the Continental trad itio n . But the issue has been joined: the
4
question of Joyce's Irishness must give serious pause to our interpre
tations of the works. Kain's statement raises immediate questions: i f
Joyce indeed believed in a "uniquely Celtic insight," what was that
insight, and wherein lies its uniqueness? What "quality" did Joyce
discover in Irish lite ra tu re and legend, and how did i t affect his art?
Before acquiescing to the universality of that s p ir it, w e must f ir s t
define its Irish origin, isolate its p a rtic u la rity . And perhaps, in
probing the p artic u larity of Joyce's heritage, w e m ay succeed in un
riddling a b it further the apparently inexhaustible enigma that is
Joyce's legacy to his readers.
Joyce's early letters to Nora reveal as urgent a sense of racial
mission as any of Stephen Dedalus' pronouncements: " . . . I was going
to be the great w riter of the future in m y country.. . . 1 thought I
heard m y country calling m e . . . 0 take m e into your soul of souls and
then I w ill become indeed the poet of m y race." Even this early, the
concept of nation is transcended by a more mystical (and certainly less
a rtis tic a lly constricting) vision of Ireland, symbolized by Nora and
her western origins: "I have loved in her the image of the beauty of
2
the world . . . the beauty and doom of the race of w h o m I am a child."
Nor was this sense of racial identity and mission merely the Byronic
posturing of youth; in 1921 w e find a thirty-nine-year-old Joyce ad
monishing Arthur Power, "you are an Irishman and you must w rite in your
ow n trad itio n . Borrowed styles are not good. You must write what is
5
3
in your blood and not what is in your head." C learly, what Joyce had
in mind here in terms of trad itio n is something deeper and more fa r-
ranging than matters of local color, speech-rhythms, or contemporary
issues. But what, then,1 is that tradition which is "in the blood?"
Power and Joyce were heirs to.one of the oldest and most p ro lific l i
terary traditions in Western Europe — a fact Joyce often stressed in
his c ritic a l writings. His was a tra d itio n , moreover, which was gener
ating a great deal of controversy and confusion in Dublin and elsewhere
at the turn of the century;, at f ir s t in scholarly circles and then
increasingly in p o litic a l a ffa irs . The revival of the Celtic lite ra ry
tradition inevitably linked its e lf with the revival of Ireland as a
national e n tity , and i t is not surprising that, as Ellmann has observed,
4
"Joyce's esthetics and po litics were one." In this respect, Joyce
mirrors a large number of his countrymen w ho cam e to a rtis tic maturity
in the era of the Irish Revival. Any examination of Joyce's under
standing or interpretation of his tradition must, necessarily, begin
with a re-examination of his relation to the Irish Revival; for i t was
through the work of the Revival, undoubtedly, that Joyce f ir s t learnt
of those traditions.
Richard Ellmann has carefully delineated Joyce's resistence to the
propaganda of the Irish Revival, and Joyce's painstaking efforts to
disassociate himself from the mediocrity and rhetoric of lesser Revival
writers needs no further demonstration. Nonetheless, for a ll his
6
nayesaying, Joyce remains in the Revival's debt: the mass of allusions
to Celtic myth throughout his works implies knowledge of materials .
which could have no other source than the Revival. Joyce's a b ility to
read Old Irish is at best a matter for speculation; he m ade a public
show of refusing to learn the language, although O'Hehir's work on
Finnegans W ake indicates he knew a good deal o f the old Gaelic, while
his 1924 le tte r to Larbaud, concluding that . . o f course Irish as a
language is FA R SUPERIOR," suggests a more than casual acquaintance
5
with the differences between Breton and Irish Gaelic. Stanislaus
Joyce reports that his brother studied Irish for a year and a h a lf,
and i t is en tirely possible that a m an w ho delighted in reading
r
Fletcher's The Purple^Island, and whose lib rary contained such books
as The Prophesies of St. Malach.y concerning the Successors of St. Peter
to the General Judgment and the Destiny of Ireland might have read any
thing and everything including The Book of the D un C o w in original
manuscript form: possible, but extremely unlikely. The f ir s t asr
sumption, therefore, must be that Joyce's sources for the "uniquely
Celtic insights" Kain alludes to were those which permeated the a t
mosphere of his childhood and youth, and with which any Dublin school
boy would have been fam iliar: the works of Keating, O'Curry, O'Grady,
P.W. Joyce, Douglas Hyde's translations, Lady Gregory's reconstructions,
Jubainville's speculations. In short, the obvious and popular main
stream from which any and a ll members of the University Historical
-
Society to which Joyce belonged would have been imbibing in th e ir con
cepts of Irish heritage and the C eltic trad ition .
In 1906 Joyce wrote to S tan islau s,."If the Irish programme did not
insist on the Irish language, I suppose I could call myself a nationa-
7
lis t." This is a rather curious declaration from the m an w ho five
years before had denounced the efforts of Yeats and Hyde with "The
Day of the Rabbiement." But then, the entire history of the agglomer
ate personalities and movements generalized as "The Irish Renaissance"
is so fraught with conflicting motives and confused aims that none of
its participants remained constant on the multitudinous-issues they
were generating. "The Day of the Rabblement" is basically a collegian
echo of Edward Martyn's professional struggle to preserve the Irish
Literary Theatre as a window on the best European drama: Martyn
dreamed of the theatre as a showcase for the plays of Ibsen and
Hauptmann, am ong others. Indeed, one has to wonder how m uch of the
young Joyce's singular 'discovery' of Ibsen is due to the very public
championing and imitating of Ibsen on the part of Edward Martyn:
despite the impression in both Stephen Hero and P o rtrait that young
Stephen is the lone appreciator of European drama in the Dublin m ilieu,
he (and Joyce) were certainly anticipated by this founder of the
original Literary Theatre. In writing "Rabblement," Joyce aligned
himself, alb e it b rie fly , with the cousin of George Moore— the sam e
George Moore w ho would com e under attack in Ulysses, Somewhere between
8
Joyce's youthful alliance with the Martyn/Moore forces and his 1906
le tte r to Stanislaus, something had happened to make Joyce s h ift (not
without reservations) toward the Hyde camp.
Perhaps one of the clearest delineations of the major issues is
found in W ayne E. H all's Shadowy Heroes: Irish Literature of the
8
1890s. In i t , Hall divides the movement into two basic camps:’ "the
language and the lite ra ry wings of the Irish Renaissance'," (p. 48) with
the Hyde forces representing the language wing through the Gaelic
League, the Yeats forces representing the lite ra ry wing. Despite the
language question, Joyce, by 1906, displays an a ffin ity with the
Hyde forces, and a closer examination of the Hyde wing of the movement
reveals the logic of such an apparent contradiction. A s Hall so ably
demonstrates, the Yeats faction, once i t had converted the Irish
Literary Theatre into The Irish National Theatre, drifted inexorably
into what Hall terms a "Celtic rather than Gaelic" preoccupation with a
mythic and idealized past, peopled with romantic doom ed heroes - - in
Yeats' words, "the perennial elements of a new and in large part ima
ginary c iv iliz a tio n ." In fin e , after a fleeting marriage of the
Hyde/Yeats factions in 1900, the Yeats wing, the Literary Revival
proper, turned more and more toward the vision of a c iv iliz a tio n a l
ready accepted as dead. Joyce clearly rejected this treatment of the
romantic past a js past, nowhere more succinctly than in the closing
section of P o rtrait: "April 6, la te r. Michael Robartes remembers
9
forgotten beauty and, when his arms wrap her round, he presses in his
arms the loveliness which has long faded from the world. Not this.
Not at a ll. I desire to press in m y arms the loveliness which has not
yet com e into this world" (p. 251). And in Ulysses the sentiment grows
even stronger: "Let m y country die for me. Up to the present i t has
done so. I don't want i t to die. D am n death. Long liv e life l"
(p. 591). I t is interesting to compare Stephen's famous cry in 'Circe'
with a sim ilar speech created for his character Rodney by George Moore
in the 1903 edition of The U nfilled F ield . In a story called "In the
Clay" Moore allows his artist-protagonist to renounce the Irish
Renaissance and Irish lif e with an indifferent "Let the Gael disap-
9
pear . .. . H e is doing i t very nicely." Moore's Rodney does not
retract — nor does he regret. In the end, Moore's character, like
Moore, dismisses a ll things Irish with " It is an unwashed country."
O ne wonders i f Stephen's reply to Haines and Mulligan in Ulysses —
"All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream" (p. 16) does not ow e some
thing to Joyce's antagonism to Moore and Moore's complacent in d if
ference to the death of Ireland, metaphorically. The contrast in
the speeches of the two characters demonstrates the basic con flict be
tween Joyce's attitude toward Irishness and that of the Literary
Revival. And so the Hyde camp, despite the excesses, games, and ' _
badges which were to provide Joyce with so m uch sardonic fun in the
character of citizen Cusack, had something to offer Joyce that the
10
Celtic Twilight forces did not; Hyde, lik e Joyce, stubbornly refused
to treat the racial heritage as a dead thing. His whole program was
based on the assumption that the Iris h heritage was a living one, and
could be carried into the future.
What Joyce had absorbed d irectly from the Revival which immersed
Dublin in his youth is perhaps more sup erficially apparent in his
c ritic a l writings than in the novels. Joyce's c ritic a l writings often
reveal a nearly unconscious influence of Revival attitudes and concepts.
In 1912 he relaxed his exile long enough to make a trip to the west,
writing two articles on Galway and Aran for II Piccolo della Sera.
In these, Ellmann points out, he "came round to sharing Ireland's
p rim itivism ."^ H e also cam e round to employing the kinds of chau
vinisms so fam iliar in Revival w riting: "Christopher Columbus . . .
is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.
A thousand years before . . . Saint Brendan weighed anchor for the un
known world from the bare shore which our ship is approaching; and,
1 1
a fte r crossing the ocean, landed on the coast of Florida." There
follows a passage that, for style and attitu d e, could have been w ritten
by O'Curry, or even Keating himself:
The island at that time was wooded and fe r tile . At the
edge of the woods he found the hermitage of Irish
m onks . . . founded by Enda, a saint of royal blood . . .
here lived and dreamed the visionary j>aint Fursa, de
scribed in the hagiographic calendar of"Ireland as the
precursor of Dante. A medieval copy of the visions of
Fursa depicts a voyage.of the saint from hell to hea
ven . . . This vision would have served as a model for
i i
the poet of the Divine Comedy.who, lik e Columbus, is
honored by posterity because he was the last to v is it
the three regions of the soul.
Joyce's audience was Ita lia n , and while no doubt there was a certain
relish in disclosing these particular instances of racial 'fir s ts ' and
'la s ts ', there is no indication that Joyce intended satire here. W e
m ay presume, judging from the tone, that Brendan's arrival in Florida,
and Fursa's preeminence were understood by Joyce as facts of his heri
tage. Moreover, the idea of Dante's Irish sources was neither peculiar
to the author of the hagiographic calendar nor to Joyce. Four years
e a rlie r, in 1908, C.S. Boswell had published a book title d A n Irish
Precursor to Dante, which one supposes was a welcome addition to the
Revival's nationalist arsenal. Boswell proposes "The Vision of
Adamnan" as the original of the Divine Com edy— though the difference
is slight enough, fo r, as the indefatigable C e ltic is t Eleanor Hull
assures us, Fursa's and Adamnan's "Visions" are actually variants of
one work. What is important here is not Joyce's precise sources, but a
revealed attitude--an acceptance of traditions which had been pain
stakingly fostered and formalized by the Revival movement.
12
A n e a rlie r essay, "Ireland Island of Saints and Sages," reveals
a more than nodding acquaintance with Revival tenets and attitudes.
Here Joyce candidly accepts the "oriental origins" of Druidism pro
pounded by O'Curry and Hyde, and treats the Spanish ancestry of the
Milesians as historic fact. H e recognizes "the five Celtic nations"
12
as a lite r a l e n tity , and in the best Revival s p irit informs his au
dience that "Dublin has been a great city for about twenty centuries."
Joyce seemed especially fond of this flamboyant notion of Dublin; in
two separate letters at this period he avers, "Dublin has been a capital
for thousands of years . . . i t is the 'second city* of the British
11
Empire . . . nearly, three times as big as Venice." O ne feels an ur
gency here to reiterate Ireland's (and Dublin's) legitim ate place in
the fabric of European history. And he sounds very m uch the orthodox
nationalist as he declares, "this glorious past is not a fic tio n based
on the s p irit of s e lf-g lo rific a tio n ." Nor, indeed, was i t a fic tio n in
this case; for the glorious past he is focusing upon in the'passage is
the- early medieval period, one of the most productive and honorable
pages in the nation's history. Joyce would of course have been fa m ili-.
ar with the illu strio u s Saints' lives from the classrooms of his child
hood (and most specifically from that sojourn am ong the Christian
Brothers which he so carefully suppressed; for the Christian Brothers
remained staunch adherents of the Revival's nationalist aims). But one
suspects that this essay owes something as well to the "dusty Archives"
of the Germans whose pioneering Celtic studies he lauds—and most
pointedly to Heinrich Zimmer's The Iris h Element in Medieval Culture.
Zimmer's book, published in translation in 1891, is a surprising
partisan document for an objective Prussian o rie n ta lis t: i t seems,
indeed,^to have been precisely tailored to Joyce's claim that the Irish
past "is not a fic tio n based on the s p irit of s e lf-g lo rific a tio n ."
‘13
Zimmer's book was undertaken in the s p irit of restoring to the con
temporary Irish som e knowledge and understanding of th e ir heritage.
While Zimmer was not a R evivalist, belonging rather to the older gen-r-
eration of C eltic scholars upon whose works the Revival b u ilt its
movement, he is nonetheless deeply concerned with repairing a racial
consciousness ( i f not conscience) deliberately ruptured in its continu
ity by English p o litic a l aims. Zimmer waxes rather hot in his de
piction of the English program of suppressing Iris h cultural heritage,
but the book is neither cranky nor propagandist!'c. I t is , rather, a
compact and thorough history of the peregrinators and th e ir contribu
tions in which one can discover without "the patience of a Bollandist"
fascinating portraits of fie ry Columbanus, St. G all, Duns Scotus, and a
summation of the Iris h contribution to European culture. Zimmer's con
clusions on the subject are m uch stronger than Joyce's: while Joyce's
essay contents its e lf with lauding the "Subtle Doctor" and the famous
heresies of the Iris h thinkers, Zimmer's book w illin g ly concludes that
the Iris h are not merely an 'element' in Medieval culture, but more
nearly the entire source of i t . Such conclusions m ay have struck Joyce
as smacking too m uch of the citizen Cusack s p irit, however determined
he seem s to uphold the veracity of the Germans. I t is worth noting,
however, that of a ll the German scholars, i t is Zimmer alone w ho held
Joyce's continued interest. Joyce's ongoing connection with Zimmer
w ill be examined more fu lly at a la te r point: in this instance, Zimmer
14
and his book m ay simply stand symbol for a host of such productions
which were com m on currency to the Revival movement. Resistant though
he was to the uncritical fervor of n ation alistic poetry, Joyce appears
to have absorbed and accepted a good deal of historical and anthropo
logical speculation upon which the national a rt was reared.
Indeed, however w e m ay laugh at the citizen Cusack, the agonized
e ffo rt expended at the end of the nineteenth century in Ireland to "get
the people o ff th e ir knees" was a poignant and sometimes astonishing
phenomenon which must have produced more than sardonic amusement in the
mind of the young w riter. The e ffo rt, however, belated, to resurrect
the conscience of the race, to reunite a people with th eir history, was
one that certainly had a particular appeal to Joyce. In retrospect,
of course, i t is easy to see that Joyce’ s mind and career would tend
more and more toward the'vast canvasses of a universal history of the
mind. But even:as early as 1906 he wrote to Stanislaus, "You remember
the book I spoke to you of . . . even then I was on the track of w rit
ing a chapter of Irish history . . . But nobody, except you, seems to
14
take m e seriously." Whatever his revulsion against the esthetic and
p o litic a l excesses of the Revival, Joyce could find a sympathetic chord
in its larger aims—restablishing the historical continuity of a people.
A s Joyce's work progressed, we observe the direction more and more
clearly: a reunion of ancient and modern, Iris h and European histories
into one vast history of the mind of Europe.
Behind or beyond the immediate narrower aims of the Irish Revival
lies a larger endeavor which must have made a strong appeal to the
emerging Viconian bent of Joyce's mind. The a rt of Revival, from
D'Arcy's sim plistic "Bride was th e ir queen of song" to Yeat's ow n so
phisticated use of Fergus, Maeve, and other C eltic myth-figures, is
based upon the painstaking researches of philologists and, most impor
ta n tly , cultural anthropologists. For a young m an who had fallen under
the spell of the "father of anthropology'," this aspect of the Revival
would have been d iffic u lt to ignore. The concept of a universal his
tory was not uniquely Viconian: Joyce would have encountered i t in
those "dusty archives" of the Germans, in the most amateurish Revival
popularizations, and in the ponderous works of pioneers Tike O'Curry,
w ho introduces his 1873 edition of Manners of Customs of the Ancient
Irish with the assertion that the study of Gaelic is "of paramount
necessity in the investigation of the philology, the ethnography, and
the history of the European nations at large" (p. 2). Perhaps, the
Revival goal of a reintegrated history was best expressed by Jeremiah
Curtin in the introduction to a humble l i t t l e volume title d Hero Tales
of Ireland, published in 1894. Curtin's book is characteristic of a
host of popularizations of Celtic materials which appeared in the
period. A n anthropologist who worked prim arily with North American
Indians, Curtin reflects perfectly the s p irit of the Revival endeavor:
The results to be obtained from a comparison of the
systems of thought lik e the Indian and the Gaelic would
1 61
be great, i f m ade thoroughly. I f extended to a ll races,
such a comparison would render possible-a history of the
hum an mind in a form such as few m en at present even
dream o f, - a history with a basis as firm as that which
lies under geology . . . To sum up, we m ay say, that'the
Indian tales reveal to us a whole system of relig io n ,
philosophy, and social p o lity . . . These tales form
a complete series. The whole mental and social lif e
of the race to which they belong is evident in them.
The Gaelic tales are a fragment of a.former system.
The e a rlie s t tales in that system are lost; those which
formed the Creation myth, and related d irectly to the
ancient fa ith and religious practices of the Gaels, were
set aside and prohibited at the introduction of C hristi
anity . . . W e find various resemblances in the two
systems . . . the question, therefore, rises steadily
enough: Can w e not use the complete system to aid us
in explaining, in som e degree, the imperfect one? W e
can undoubtedly.(pp. x lv i - x lix ).
Curtin had no especial interest in glorifying Ireland. As his preface
indicates, he was a m an very m uch of his era--the era of Frazer's
Golden Bough, of intense speculation on the prehistory of Europe. H e is
characteristic of the milieu that eventually produced the theories of
Freud and Jung. One does not wish to suggest that Joyce's concept of a
universal history of the mind derived from Curtin: certainly w e can
never know i f Joyce even heard of this modest volume. However, the
guiding principles of Curtin's introduction were ubiquitous to the
Revival. The desire to reconstitute the Celtic world.in its entirety
underlies the massive studies of O'Grady, O'Curry, P.W. Joyce, and
many other texts from which Joyce would have learned his C eltic mytho
logy.
W hen Stephen Dedalus setscout at the end of P o rtrait "to forge in
the smithy of m y soul the uncreated conscience of m y race," he is
certainly not facing an untraveled byway: he has set his foot upon
the main road of a host of C eltic scholars and lite ra ry m en of his
time—the highway of the Revival. Joyce chose Stephen's words with
great care: in the ancient Druidical triads there are but three "re
newals of the world: a woman's belly, a cow's udder, a smith's fu r-
15
nace." Hence, Stephen is not setting out to invent something new,
but to renew something already in existence—he uses the word forge,
not create. And he characterizes the racial conscience as "uncreated:"
linked with the forge symbol, this does not indicate something that
never was, but rather suggests something damaged, dismantled. In
actu a lity, the conscience of the race had been dismantled and nearly
obliterated long before the Christian suppressions Curtin alludes
to—and the Irish Revival, spurred by scholars lik e Zimmer before Joyce
was even born, had undertaken the identical task of redeveloping i t
from the fragmented remains of ancient texts.
The plight of the Revival is succinctly expressed by Joyce in
Ulysses through Stephen's observation that Iris h a rt is "The cracked
lookingglass of a servant" (p. 6 ). The vision of the race which the
Revival struggled to correct and redeem was an extremely fragmented
and, more importantly, extremely degrading p o rtra it of its e lf handed
dow n by its various masters since Classical times. Haines, repre- •
sentative of Ireland's current masters in Ulysses remarks cooly to
Stephen that " it seems history is to blame" fo r England's mistreatment
18
of the Iris h . This is correct in som e degree, for history, particular
ly that written by Classical w riters, helped to create a vision of
Celtic depravity which in turn provided the English with the rationa
liza tio n that they were bringers of c iv iliz a tio n , law, and enlighten
ment to a race incapable of creating or governing on th e ir own.
Stephen's^nightmare of history' was a burden borne by the entire Celtic
race. The multitude of histories which were to blame have been amply
commented upon by Heinrich Zimmer and a host of C eltic scholars and
Revivalists; yet i t might be well at this point to give som e small
indication of the forces which 'uncreated1 the conscience of the race.
O ne of the earliest attacks cam e from Strabo (63 B.C. - 24.A .D.),
who reported in his Geography from a second-hand account that the Irish
had been observed "feeding on hum an flesh," and that they were prone
"openly to have commerce not only with other women, but with th e ir o w n
mothers and sisters." Sexual.1icense5 and incest, and particularly the
amorality and aggressiveness of Celtic women, is perhaps the most uni
versal and oft-repeated indictment against the race: nearly a ll 'his
torians' from Strabo and Diodorus Siculus onward provide copious com
mentary on the licentiousness of the Celts. But probably the most
influen tial history, both for the Revival and for Joyce, was Julius
Caesar 's D e Bello G allico. Early in P ortrait the child Stephen is
confronted with "Julius Caesar wrote the Callico Belly" neatly in- ■
scribed on the wall of Clongowes W ood school: late in Ulysses a m uch
older Stephen says "Oblige m e by taking away that knife. I can't
look at the point of i t . I t reminds m e of R om an history" (p. 635).
19
A s primary motif in this chapter is backstabbing, w e m ay take the re
mark as yet another of Joyce/Stephen's variations on the betrayal
theme—and not incidentally the R om an betrayal of the Celts. In his
torical terms, Caesar stabbed the Celts in the back m ilita rily (as Cato
suggests) merely to enhance his ow n power in Rome. From the Revival
point of view (and perhaps from Stephen's) the real lasting betrayal
would be the writing of a false history, D e Bello Gallico its e lf, to
ju s tify the enslavement of the Celts. A s Joyce shows in both novels,
the modern Celtic child grows up surrounded by the inescapable presence
of R om an history; and that history, am ong other things, depicts the
Celts as a race of natural, w illing slaves. "The masses are treated as
slaves, exercise no in itia tiv e , and are never taken into counsel. The
greatest part . . . bind themselves in slavery to the nobles, w ho
exercise over them a ll the rights masters have over slaves."^ D e
Bello Gallico makes nodding references to Celtic cannabalism (p. 198),
but the most damning commentaries, for the Revival (and perhaps for
Joyce personally), were Caesar's attack on the druids and his consequent
ineradicable misrepresentation of the priests and religion of the con
tinental Celts:
The whole G allic race is addicted to a religious ritu a l;
consequently, those suffering from serious maladies or
subject to the perils of battle sacrifice hum an victims
or vow to do so. The o ffician ts they employ are
Druids . . . There are regular public sacrifices of
the sam e character. S om e weave huge figures of wicker,
and f i l l th eir limbs with liv e humans, who are then
burned when the figures are set a fire . They suppose
20
that the gods-prefer this execution to be applied to
. . . malefactors . . . but in default of such they
resort to the execution of the innocent (pp. 136-137).
This lurid image of Druidism colored the Western imagination for cen
turies: from Caesar's time to the present, many thinkers and writers
have continued to interpret Stonehenge and other monuments of the
ancient race as altars erected for the immolation or torture of hum an
beings by a savage and cruel people; continued to depict druids as
perpetrators of diabolic and bizarre rite s .
Caesar then goes on to record: "The god they particu larly worship
is Mercury . . . they regard him as the inventor of a ll crafts, the
pathfinder and guide, and the most powerful patron of gain and tra f-
fik in g . Next they rank Apollo, Mars, Juno, and Minerva, of w hom th eir
conceptions are v irtu a lly the sam e as other peoples" (p. 137). Because
Caesar was Caesar, and, moreover, was w riting with the authority of an
eye-witness (as Strabo, Herodotus, Diodorus and others were not),
De Bello Gallico managed to cancel in one historic stroke the entire
racial conscience of the continental Celts. His rough table of god-
correspondences was elaborated by Lucan and others and became the ubi
quitous interpratatio Romana. The Gaulish race, subjugated to dicta
tion from the R om an Empire, recast in stone a votive history for
its e lf —the famous "Jupiter Columns" and other statuary; and thus
th e ir racial heritage and identity disappeared forever. From Caesar's
commentaries onward, speculations on the moral, e th ic a l, or religious
21
heritage of the Celts were tested by the authority of the interpretatio
Romana. And i f the racial conscience of the Gauls went dow n before
the.Roman standards, indiscriminate Romanization of the G allic b e lie f-
system had repercussions on the insular Celts: because Caesar re
ported that the druids received th e ir training always in the British
Isles, the interpretatio Rom ana soon cam e to be applied to the B ritish ,
Scottish, and Irish belief-systems as w ell. Joyce has a minor revenge
on the Rom ans in the 'Aeolus' section of Ulysses where professor
MacHughconflates the R om an and B ritish Empires:
What was th e ir civilisatio n ? Vast, I allow, but v ile .
Cloacae: ,sewers . . . The Roman, Tike the Englishman
who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new
shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he never
set i t ) only his cloacal obsession.(p. 131).
But despite MacHugh's reminder that the Rom ans never occupied Ireland,
R om an history, the interpretatio Romana, and D e Bello Gallico were
m uch more than sardonic targets for disgruntled Irish schoolboys and
prideful Dubliners—either in Joyce's novels or in his actual m ilieu.
For anyone aspiring to forge the conscience of the Celtic race, the
R om an uncreation of i t remains a formidable obstacle.
I f history is to blame for the woes of Stephen's Ireland, then,
next to the Classical commentators, the most culpable perpetrator is
Giraldus Cambrensis, a twelfth-century Welsh-Norman historian and
'uncreator' extraordinaire. Giraldus undertook around 1187 to w rite
The Topography of Ireland and the History of the Conquest of Irelandj
i
22
mainly to ju s tify the Norman conquest of the island. Unlike the
austere Julius Caesar, Giraldus seem s a born mischief-maker, and an
incredible naif as w ell. But while Cambrensis' nearly lim itless gul
l i b i l i t y makes for tru ly amusing reading in the late twentieth century,
his condemnations of the lewdness, vileness, and licentiousness of the
Iris h race produced a vision of Irishness in the Western world that
took centuries to dispel. For the Revival, one of the most arduous
tasks in ju stifyin g th e ir racial heritage lay in refuting the testimony
of Giraldus Cambrensis. Sometimes, in his haste to denigrate every
thing Iris h , Giraldus is merely hilarious--as in his rush to depict an
everything-backward-land: "These people, w ho have customs so very
different from others, and so opposite to them. . . beckon when they
m ean you should go away, and nod backwards as often as they wish to be
rid of you. Likewise, i,n;this nation, the m en pass th e ir w a te r.'s it-" .
tin g , the w om en standing."^
Giraldus was apparently obsessed with the ancient lore of shape-
shiftin g, a topic which has become, unfortunately, nearly synonomous
with Druid b e lie f. A m ong the human/animal transformations he reports
"a wolf who conversed with a priest" w ho fin a lly convinces the priest
to administer the Last Rites to his dying mate; another transformed
human, of course. The conversation ends with the prediction that the
Normans w ill henceforth rule Ireland because, "For the sins of our
nation, and th e ir enormous vices, the anger of the Lord . . . hath
23
given them into the hands of th e ir enemies" (p. 81). Here Giraldus m ay
have been hearing a portion of Tain ("How the Bulls were Born") in
Christian redaction, and has added a b it of Norman propaganda on his
own. Again, he te lls us "Of a W o m an w ho had a Beard, and a Hairy Crest
and Mane on her Back." In this "Duvenald, King of Limerick . . . had
a w om an with a beard down to her navel, and, also, a crestslik e a colt
of a year old, which reached from the top of her neck down her backbone,
and was covered with hair . . . she constantly attended the court, an
object of rid icu le as well as of wonder" (p. 84). I t would seem that
the visitin g historian has been befuddled by an extremely garbled ver
sion of the f ir s t branch of the Mabinogian— in which the great queen
goddess Rhiannon is humuliated and condemned to serve the court in the
capacity of a horse. Giraldus' in a b ility to separate metaphoric ut
terance from lit e r a l, or to perceive symbolic significance, is so
astonishingly complete that he ends his recital of shape-shifting pro
digies with ruminations that the-ancient story of Pasiphae and the bull
is a lite r a l instance from the past of his current topic, and fin a lly
that Apuleius' The Golden Ass, as a personal testimony, validates the
cases in point. Unfortunately, Giraldus' errors are not simply
funny—they begin to take on serious, even ugly, connotations of racial
depravity. The half-ox half-man he describes "was at last secretly put
to death . . . in consequence of the jibes with which the young m en
about the castle [ i.e .* Normans] assailed the natives of the country
24
for begetting such monsters by intercourse with cows" (p. 85). To
underscore he adds, " It is a fa c t, that shortly before the arrival o f
the English [Normans] in the island, a cow gave 'b irth ■to a man-calf,
the fr u it of a union between a m an and a cow, in the mountains of
Glendalough, that trib e being especially addicted to such abominations."
Glenda!ough, as Cambrensis must have known, had been a center of learn
ing and book-production for at least four hundred years before the
arrival of the Normans: to single out the "tribe" of Glendalough in
this way seem s suspiciously akin to Caesar's particular assault on the
druids of Gaul. In both cases, the invaders seek to discredit what they
perceive to be a central repository of the conscience and heritage of
the race they wish to subdue.
But.Giraldus has only begun on the Irish : " It is indeed a most
filth y race, a race sunk in vice . . . they do not contract marriages,
nor shun incestuous connections . . . Nay, what is more detestable . . .
in many parts of Ireland brothers ( I w ill not say marry) seduce and de
bauch the wives of th e ir brothers deceased, and have incestuous in te r
course with them . . . " (p. 135). Cambrensis’ text is crowded with
the same sort of moral indictments found in e a rlie r Classical commenta
ries; his rhetoric super-saturated with adjectives lik e "foul," "bru
ta l," "detestable," "abominable," ['infamous," and "polluted." The
Topography thus became an unavoidable target for la te r C elticists and
the Revival movement its e lf: such an 'eyewitness' history could not
;25
be ignored; Cambrensis had to be answered. The cen trality of the
issues Giraldus raised was not lost on Joyce, and Ulysses is shot
through with allusions to Cambrensis. In som e instances, Joyce is
simply having fun, as when, in 'Cyclops,1 the c itizen id io tic a lly ex
horts his listeners to read Cambrensis (p. 326). Again, Joyce mocks
Giraldus' credulity in the medical students' parodic ruminations on
dog-haired infants and other monstrosities in 'Oxen! (p. 411). 'Circe*
offers numerous references, from Vi rag's invocation of "Rualdus
Columbus" as discoverer- of infamy to Bloom's revelation that i t was
his friend "Gerald" w ho converted him to wearing^ women's clothes and
influenced him to try urination s ittin g dow n (pp. 536-537). Echoes
of Cambrensis are too numerous to detail here, but while many are
s a tiric , others reveal with what depth of seriousness Joyce regarded
the influence of Giraldus' history: Stephen's thoughts in the lib ra ry ,
for instance, unconsciously parallel (and parody) Cambrensis' a ttitu d e,
but the result in not funny:
- They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that
the criminal annals of the world, stained with a ll
other incests and b e s tia litie s , hardly record its
breach. Som e with mothers, sires and daughters, lesbic
sisters . . . nephews with grandmothers . . . queens
with prize bulls (p. 207).
And more strongly, in 'C irc e '—where shape-shifting becomes a h o rrific
tour-de-force—Stephen drunkenly struggles with intimations of the sins
of the past once again in Cambrensis1 confused terms: " . . . Queens
lay with prize bulls. Remember Pasiphae for whose lust m y
26/ .
grandoldgrossfather made the fir s t eonfessionbox . . ." (p. 569). "m y
grandoldgrossfather" is an interesting touch, prompted perhaps by
Joyce's keen awareness that he was descended from Norman, not native,
stock, and thus shared an ancestral bond with the Norman priest-turned-
historian.
But o f.a ll the calumnies heaped upon the Iris h by Cambrensis, the
one which created the most serious problems for the Revival, and which
w ill prove the most germane to a study of Joyce and Ulysses as we pro
ceed, is Geraldus' famous description of the C eltic r ite of kingship.
I t remains, for many reasons, one of the most fe r tile and significant
documents for C eltic scholars and anthropologists to this day. The
Thomas Forster translation is produced here in its en tire ty ; although
numerous other translations would also have been available to young
Joyce, they do not d iffe r substantially:
Chapter X X V
O F A N E W A N D M O N S T R O U S W A Y O F INAUGURATING THEIR KINGS
[Note: W hen Cambrensis says "new" he means new to the
Normans, not new to the native inhabitants].
There are som e things which sam e would prevent m y re
la tin g , unless the course of m y subject required i t .
For a filth y story seems to re fle c t stain on the author,
although i t m ay display his s k ill. But the severity of
history does not allow us either to sacrifice truth or
affect modesty; and what is shameful in its e lf may be
related by pure lips in decent words. There is then, in
the northern and most remote part of U lster, namely, at
Kenel C u nil,' a nation which practices a most barbarous
and abominable r ite in creating th eir king. The whole
27
people of that country being gathered in one place, a
white mare is lead into the midst of them, and he w ho
is to be inaugurated, not as a prince but as a brute,
not as a king but as an outlaw, com es before the people
on a ll fours, confessing himself a beast with no less
impudence than imprudence. The mare being immediately
k ille d , and cut in pieces and boiled, a bath is then
prepared for him from the broth. S ittin g in th is , he
eats of the flesh which is brought to him, the people
standing round and partaking of i t also. H e is also
required to drink of the broth in which he is bathed,
not drawing i t in any vessel, nor even in his hand, but
lapping i t with his mouth. These unrightious rite s being
duly accomplished, his royal authority and dominion are
ra tifie d .
1... Tirconnell, now the county of Donegal. Iris h a n ti-
' quaries u tte rly repute the disgusting account here
given by Giraldus of the inauguration of the kings
of this te rrito ry . See Ware vol. i i , p. 64 (Forster's
footnote, p. 138).
Forster's heated footnote in 1863 gives som e indication of the temper
of the entire Revival's response to Cambrensis--and most particularly
to this celebrated passage. O ne can imagine that this description of
human/equine mating--even couched in Giraldus' euphemistic Latin—smote
harder on Victorian Christian ears than on twelfth-century Norman ones.
Forster's or Ware's rebuttals notwithstanding, this passage has re
mained a center of controversy to the present day. In i t w e fin d , of
course, the germ of Leopold Bloom's investiture in Ulysses: "Under an
arch of triumph Bloom appears . . . H e is seated on a miIkwhite horse
with long flowing crimson t a il , rich ly caparisoned, with golden head
s ta ll. Wild excitement" (p. 481). But before w e can fu lly appreciate
Joyce's adaptation of the Tirconnel r it e , i t must be seen in a far
28
larger perspective of C eltic ritu a l and the significance of such ritu^
a ls , symbolic or lite r a l. From the beginning of the nineteenth century,
C eltic scholars, struggling to re-establish the decency and moral con
science of the Iris h race, argued amongst themselves as to the possible
symbolic meanings of historical 'fa c ts ' lik e Cambrensis'. But curious
ly , the f ir s t attempt at discrediting Cambrensis and a ll of the his
torical 'uncreators' of the racial conscience was not a nineteenth-cen
tury C e ltic is t, m uch less a R evivalist. The f ir s t salvo cam e from a
seventeenth-century outlaw priest—Geoffrey Keating.
Quite naturally, Geoffrey Keating was a major hero in the Revival
canon, and his History of Ireland a fam iliar staple in the curriculum
of schoolboys in Joyce's era. Keating would no doubt have a special
appeal for Joyce: f ir s t because he was, lik e Joyce, of Norman-Irish
descent, and second, he was an exile twice over. Forced to fle e Ire
land in the f ir s t wave of the Reformation, Keating returned with the
Stuart ascension. Caught in the Crown's shifting attitudes towards
Catholicism, he ultim ately.resorted to his ow n brand of silence, e x ile ,
and cunning— he became a hermit outlaw in the impenetrable Aherlow
Forest. In th a t fin a l exile he wrote, in Iris h , the f ir s t fu ll-s c a le
rebuttal to a ll 'h isto ries' promulgated by foreigners—C lassical,
Medieval, and contemporary:
. . . because I have undertaken to w rite and publish
a History of Ireland, I deem myself obliged to complain
previously to som e of the wrongs and acts of injustice
practiced towards its inhabitants . . . For there is no
29
historian that has w ritten upon Ireland . . . who does
not strive to v ilif y and calumniate . . .W e have proofs
of this in the accounts given by Cambrensis, Spenser,
Stanehurst, Hanmer, Camden, Barclay, Morrison, Davies,
Campion . . . when they speak of the Iris h one would
imagine that these m en were actuated by the instincts .
of the beetle; . . . i t bustles hurriedly around until
i t meets with som e loathsome ordure, and i t buries i t
s e lf thereinl8.
F irs t to com e under attack in Strabo, "who asserts in his third
book that the Iris h liv e upon hum an flesh. M y answer to this charge is
that Strabo has lied . . . nowhere in our ancient records do w e read
of any person, that eat hum an flesh , except Ethni Uathach . . . w ho
was nursed by the Desies of Munster, where she was fed on .the flesh of
infants, in hope of her arriving .the sooner at maturity . .' ."
(p. x x iii) . The second-hand account of cannibalism handed down to
Strabo and thence to Caesar and forward to St. Jerome and onward to
Cambrensis, e tc ., appears to have its roots in an increasingly garbled
rete llin g of the perfidy of the Clan Deisi. In the o rig in a l, the in
famous Clan Deisi took the King of Leinster's daughter in fosterage
and committed this outrage to hurry the g ir l's growth so they might
collect her fosterage-price from the m an she would marry. As foretold,
in O'Curry's translation, "the King of Munster . . . rewarded the Dei-
sis with new lands, providing they could clear out the tribes living
t h e r e . T h e Clan Deisi, by treachery, did manage to disin h erit the
existing trib es, who have held the nam e Ossary ("wild deer") since that
time. The avarice of .the Clan Deisi remained a notorious chapter in
30
the Iris h annals, and one wonders i f this is not the reason Joyce chose
Deasy as the nam e for Stephen's employer in Ulysses. The je s t is not
merely in Deasy's avarice, in the false concern for suffering which
barely conceals his obsession with p ro fit: rather, i t lies in the fact
that this "concerned Irishman," who boasts of his fam ily's historic
patriotism , descends from the clan which f ir s t provided ancient his
torians with som e of the nastiest ammunition for destroying the repu
tation of the entire race. The 'history' segment of Ulysses, then,
contains layer upon layer of irony either ignored or unrecognized by i
its presiding Nestor: i f the original Nestor's history was hearsay,
Joyce's Nestor, by virtue of his ow n name, is hearsay personified.
Keating then turns on Cambrensis: "we shall begin by bringing 1
his lie s hom e to Cambrensis himself," (p. x x v ii) and takes out a fte r
the notorious kin g -rite description. Dr. Keating translates Giraldus'
original.'so that no trace of the insinuation of sodomy appears.
Keating contents himself with "This is plainly an impudent falsehood
of Cambrensis, for the annals of Ireland e x p lic itly record the mode of
inaugurating the king of Kinel-Connail." ITirconnellJ In high dudgeon
Keating concludes, ". . . 1 again assert, that Cambrensis has broached
here a downright lie , as unwarrantable as i t is malicious" (p. x x ix ).
In a footnote to th is , Keating's translator O'Mahony rather bewildering-
ly comments, "Dr. Keating is p articu larly indignant that Cambrensis,
himself in holy orders, should malign a house that had given so many
ornlanents to the Catholic fa ith ." Scarcely,any wonder that the
31
translator in 1857 is nonplussed at Keating's vehemence, as the heart
of the matter, the king's sexual intercourse with the white mare, has
been obliterated (though the fa u lt is not merely Keating's fastidious
ness, but Cambrensis* ow n original round-about L a tin )/ The transla- '
tor!s confusion indicates the extent to which n ic itie s of Victorian
morality-could further confound a perceptive reconstruction of the
C eltic world. As Professor Patrick Ford informs us, i t was not u n til
Julius Pokorny (the same Pokorny favored by Haines in Ulysses) pub
lished his commentaries on Cambrensis in 1926 that scholarly sensibi
litie s had grown 'modern* enough, apparently, to accept the fu ll import
20
of the passage stated in p rin t. After faulting Spenser's genealogi
cal history for gross misunderstandings of etymology, dismissing
Campion as "a juggling mountebank," and reproving Sir John Davies for
quarreling with Brehon law, Keating concludes: "I shall persue the
opinions of these Englishmen no longer . . . the greater part of those
w ho have written malevolently of Ireland had no foundation for th eir
calumnies . . . Cambrensis . . . appears to have received a medly of
fables from som e dunce or blind man" (p. I v i i i ) . ■
By modern standards, Keating's History of Ireland, completed in
1629, is a hopelessly naive document. The author apparently accepts
works such as The Book of Invasions, The Annals of the Four Masters,
the Dissenchas, and others as pure factual history. While i t is cer
ta in ly an improvement over Cambrensis' hapless twelfth-century . . -
32
cred ulity, i t is unfortunately fa r less liv e ly reading. And, alas, for
the collective conscience of the race, i t is aswarm with treacheries,
fra tric id e s , parracides, and permeated with sexual abandon of every
s trip e , including the old bugaboo, incest. Keating's History nonethe
less remains an acutely important document: m any of Keating's sources
were to vanish in the Cromwellian suppression, thus leaving Keating's
book a primary source from which other more speculative minds would
construct more penetrating symbolic interpretations of the C eltic world.
Above a ll, the History set the precedent for questioning the authority
of antiquity on C eltic lif e . Despite his ow n lim itations as an ima
ginative interpretor, Keating opened the door to an examination of the
Iris h heritage on its ow n terms. His History was the f ir s t work to
seriously impugne the "cracked lookingglass."
Keating's lim itations are nowhere more evident than in his tre a t
ment of Macha-Tnow long accepted as a myth-figure, and one of the
central importance to this study of Joyce, as w ill be demonstrated.
Keating presents Macha as a historical personage, which results in a
rather unfortunate p o rtra it of the sort of immorality seized upon by
ancient commentators. Here we find that Macha, the only Ard-Righan
or "high-queen" to rule a ll Ireland, accomplished supreme sovereignty
in the following way: she was daughter, o f- one of. three brothers who were
co llectively Ard-Righ ("high-king") of Ireland, and upon her father's
death demanded the right to reign every .third year in his place. O ne
'33
of her dissenting uncles she k ille d in b a ttle ; the other she mated
with, thus assuring herself of continual sovereignty. The three sons
of the uncle k ille d in battle challenged her rule; but Macha, dis-
guished as a leperous hag, approached th e ir forest cam p and managed to
lure each in turn into the forest. She then enslaved them, brought
them back in chains, and forced them to build Emain Macha--capitol
of U lster. Actually, the episode of the three young nephews is a
barely disguised g raft on the Macha story of an episode in the kingship
of Lugaidh— the king Macha‘ s father slew to gain the kingship for his
trio . Just four pages previous in Keating's text w e find that Lugaidh
got the kingdom thus: hunting in the forest, "he met with a certain
deformed hag, upon w h om there was a magic mask; that this hag became
his mistress, and that she afterwards took o ff her magical mask and
then appeared to him in the form of a most beautiful young woman. By
this hag . . . Ireland is a lle g o ric a lly meant, inasmuch as he at f ir s t
endured m uch pain and trouble, but afterward . . . pleasure and happi
ness" (p. 243). Keating's translator inserts an admonitory footnote
here, recalling that i t was not Lugaidh w ho got the hag, but Lugaidh's
son, and to enforce his correction he quotes the source poem directly:
I say to thee. 0 mild youth
With m e arch-kings cohabit;
I am that majestic slender damsel
The sovereignty of Alba and Eri
To thee I have revealed myself tonight;
That is a ll; but with m e thou shalt not cohabit;
Thou shalt have a son, honored in him
He is the m an with w hom I shall dwell.
34
The nam e of thy son, the mode is good,
Shall be Lugaidh Mor; he shall be a royal son,
For w e have been longing m uch for him,
He shall be a druid, a prophet, and a poet.
(O'Mahony's footnote, p. 244)
Of course, w e have heard the Wife of Bath te ll a conflated version of
these ancient tales. W e cannot fa u lt Chaucer (who was no C eltic scho
la r) for misconstruing the symbols to mean that w om en want sovereignty
over th e ir husbands in domestic matters. But i t is curious that
Keating, who suggests that he understands he is dealing with a lle g o ri
cal material on one page, seems to miss the point altogether in viewing
the combined tales: that is , that the Macha-hag figure is not an
historic personage; nor does she represent Ireland per se, but sym
bolizes the legitimacy of sovereignty. As she says in the poem, she
is the sovereignty of Alba (England) and Eri (Ire la n d ). Unfortunately,
there is l i t t l e of the speculative anthropologist about Keating, and
he proceeds with a catalogue of genealogical horrors that make C am
brensi s' accounts seem tame by comparison.
Of particular interest is the story of one house—the house which
produced Maeve of Cruachan, w ho is central to the U lster.cycle and
therefore to certain aspects of Ulysses which w e w ill be discussing.
I t is therefore pertinent to review this material as a touchstone to
the interpretations o f.la te r scholars. W e begin with the Ard-Righ
Eochaid Feidlech, so called because he never stopped sighing since he
slew his sons in b a ttle . These sons, Bres, Nar, and Lothar, "were
35.
called the three Finnemhna, . . . i . e . , 'not separate' or 'not sin-. .
g le !““( p..2 6 4 ). In fin e , the sons were trip le ts (though perhaps not
in our usual understanding of the term). King Eochaid went into
Cannaught and demanded of the trio of kings there a c a s tle -s ite . The
th ird , Tinni, agreed, and Eochaid gave Tinni his daughter Maeve as a
w ife. The palace was b u ilt upon a magic Druid h i l l , whereupon Maeve
"bestowed the com m and [of the palace] on her mother Cruacha" from
which the famous fortress took its nam e (p. 266). Cruachan remains one
of the three most important pagan c itie s in Ireland. But more than
the place-name its e lf , Cruachan owes its importance to the presence of
Cruacha's incredible daughter, Maeve. W hen Tinni died, she ruled
Cruachan, and eventually a ll Connaught, alone. Keating then gives the
legend of Dierdre as the explanation of the perpetual enmity between
Connaught and U lster, and further adds that a fte r Fergus was expelled
from Ulster and went to Maeve for shelter he mated with her also, pro
ducing triplet.sons named Kiar, Coro, and Conmac. Curiously, Keating
does not mention that Maeve was also mated, prior to her sojourn to
Connaught, with her great enemy Conchubar, King of Ulster: although,
in tru th , the lis ts of Maeve's 'husbands' varies so greatly from source
to source that i t is quite fru itle s s to l i s t the combinations. As w e
turn from Keating to O'Curry or O'Grady or to more modern scholars, the
l i s t of Maeve's mates becomes as hopeless a tangle as Bloom's catalogue
of Molly's lovers, and probably for the same reason. Maeve's matings
36-
are of a mythical nature—symbolic, not h is to ric , and shall be consi
dered in la te r chapters from that aspect. But there are even more com-
plications in this unbridled family: ones which help shed som e lig h t
on Keating's d iffic u ltie s as a historian, and on the d iffic u ltie s of
nineteenth-century scholars using Keating as th e ir beacon.
W e com e next to Ard-Righ Lugaidh Riabh-n-Derg, grandson of the old
high-king Eochaidh and nephew to the now queen of Connaught,Maeve.
This Lugaidh, most curiously, is son of a ll three of the Finnemhna,
Maeve's half-brothers. Keating explains the situation this way: "He
was called from his having had a red c irc le around his neck and ano
ther round his waist. For he was the son of the three Finns by th e ir
ow n s is te r, namely Clothra . . . w hom they had violated in a drunken
f i t . This fact is recorded in the following verse from which we learn
than Clothra, who bore this Lugaidh to her brothers, bore also
Crimthann Niadnar, to the sam e Lugaidh, her son:
Lugaid Raiabh n derg, of fa ir Crimthann
The father was, though yet his brother;
And Clothra of the comely form
To her own son was grandmother.
" It was thought at that time that the upper part of Lugaidh's person
bore a likeness to Nar; that next he resembled Bres, between the
two c irc le s , and that his lower extremities were lik e those of Lothar.
Lugaidh ended his lif e by flinging himself upon his ow n sword; or he
died of g rie f for his children" (p. 288). The torments of an Oedipus
Rex, not to mention Hamlet, were mild in comparison with this state
37
of a ffa irs , and needless to say, the commentaries of the Revival trans
lato r upon this narrative reach a state of outrage:
"What proof is there, beyond the s illy and senseless
puns of which w e have already seen so many, the Riabh-n-
derg means of the red circles? / The general nature of
bardic derivation should teach us to be cautious how to
accredit idle or malignant stories that seem to have no
other foundation than a forced or stupid play upon nam es
. . . the bards, having been le ft nothing Iby Church
suppression] but bald names and title s . . . coined idle
stories thereupon, to which they often gave a malicious
or calumnious coloring, in order to please the prejudices
of th e ir ow n tribes by deprecating those of th e ir ene
mies. I t is lik e ly that those old names were as l i t t l e
understood a thousand years ago as they are now.and that
they were as mystic and enigmatic to the shenachies of
that time, as they must perhaps, ever remain to those of
the present." (O'Mahony's footnote, p. 288).
Keating's History certainly does o ffer a copious display of meanings
derived from puns: but Keating's in a b ility to penetrate th e ir deeper
significance does not warrant O'Mahony's dismissal of them as "sense
less," "forced," or "stupid"—quite the contrary. A s in a ll ancient
lite ra tu re s , but perhaps with greater frequency and f l a i r , the Celtic
trad ition is b u ilt on puns and word-play. The s h ift from an oral to
w ritten m ode perhaps diminished that impact somewhat: nonetheless,
naming and punning were integral not merely to the a rt of poetry, but
to the underlying religious significance of that a rt to the Celts.
The intense importance of this was not to be lost on James Joyce—w ho
was less embarassed, no doubt, than the early Revival apologists.
Indeed, i t was not, perhaps, until Joyce reached the height of his
powers in Finnegans W ake that the "barbarous magic" of puns—of words
38
21
themselves was reintroduced to the modern consciousness.
However, it'is 's a fe to say, judging even from the numerous dis
claimers of Keating's tran slator, that as a rebuttal to the historic
calumniators the History fa lls rather short of the mark desired by
Revival scholars. In fairness, Keating was a prisoner of his era;
he had hot the tools nor the set of mind of an investigative anthro
pologist. A priest himself, he was incapable of the speculative nature
even a Leopold Bloom displays in surmising" . . . that those bits were
genuine forgeries a ll of them put in by monks most probably or its the
big question of our national poet over again, w ho precisely wrote them"
(p. 634). I f we m ay be audacious enough to elaborate Joyce's pun, the
problem, i t seems, is that no one wrote them precisely.
A s one reads Keating's History, the increasingly insistent pattern
of tr ip le t kings and one queen, or three brothers and one w ife, mother,
or s is te r, in variant combinations, stamps these materials not as
history but as archetypal ro.yth.Jn process of evolution. The dominance
of a pattern of three brothers and one w om an or queen clearly indicates
the germ of Strabo's and Cambrensis' "brothers, debauch wives of bro
thers" theme: i t indicates as well the germ of Stephen Dedal us'
vaunted Shakespeare theory--p articu larly in the l i t t l e Lugaidh jin g le
(Joyce himself points the clue on page 210 of Ulysses) . While Keating
remained a staple in the Revival canon (Patrick Dinneen brought out his
ow n translation of Keating in 1908) i t was obvious th at, O'Mahony
,39
notwithstanding, "those of the present" would not be content to allow
the materials to remain "mystic and enigmatic." What was needed was
not a historian, but philologists and cultural anthropologists; and
the Revival supplied a host of them to rework the Iris h materials with
more sophisticated tools. They worked, naturally, always with an eye
to Keating's precedent: a refutation o f the centuries-old indictment
that the Celts had l i t t l e , i f any, "conscience" whatever.
Then, in 1900, the issue came to a head. Hyde's ceaseless pres
sure, to have Iris h language introduced into the school curriculum had
resulted in the formulation of a Committee to study the matter. Hall
te lls us, "At a hearing on education in 1899 Dr. Robert Atkinson, a
professor at T rin ity College, te s tifie d against Gaelic as a subject for
schoolchildren. Besides being too d iffic u lt and often morally u n fit,
22
the Iris h sagas had nothing worthwhile to o ffe r . . (emphasis
added). In 1900 the Commission to investigate secondary education gave
a fin al emphatic "No" to the language faction's hopes. A m ong its
reasons, the Committee declared "that there was no imagination or '
23
idealism in the whole range of Iris h lite ra tu re ." Once more the
hopes to reunite the people with th e ir heritage had been dashed, and
from this point, the question of the moral or ethical content of the
ancient materials was no longer merely historical or academic; i t be
came immediate and p o litic a l.
The reaction of the Revival was sw ift and p ro lific . Hyde at once
contacted the lite ra ry wing and asked Yeats for a reworking of the
40
ancient sagas which would be both a rtis tic a lly impressive and morally
u p liftin g . Busy with his ow n projects (and embarassingly deficient in
the Gaelic language s k ills required), Yeats delegated the task to Lady
Augusta Gregory. Yeats cooperated further by scheduling an Irish-1an-
guage play of Hyde's Casadh an tSuqan, as well as his ow n saga-derived
Diarmuid and Grania for the 1901 season of the Iris h Literary Theatre--
a gesture which provoked Joyce to his re ta lia to ry "Day of the Rabble-
ment." Joyce^s student protest was no more effective than Edward
24
Martyn's professional one; and perhaps one of the most significant
results of the 1900 crisis was that i t led Yeats and Gregory directly
into the "folk" movement, drawing most of the lite ra ry wing with them.
By 1902 Lady Gregory had produced her long book, Cuchulain of
Muirthemne, the "K iltartan" Book of the Dun Cow, and Yeats and Gregory
had abandoned the Irish Literary Theater to form the Irish National
Theater—where the folk movement was to hold fu ll sway.
Joyce's antagonism to this s h ift into folk idiom as a major m ode
of Iris h a rtis tic expression has been so well researched that i t needs
no further elaboration here. Gregory's Cuchulain of Muirthemne does,
however, raise two issues which illum inate the reactive motivations
underlying som e of the s ty lis tic and 'obscene' aspects of Joyce's m a
ture works. Gregory's method was to gather a ll extant versions of
The Book of the D un C ow and the Ulster cycle, and then to conflate .
and/or suppress the variants with an eye to the fact that "priests :
might legitim ately say that the other called up an indecent picture"
41
(p. 8 ). What she produced was, by her ow n admission, an Ulster cycle
for schoolchildren. The devastating e ffe c t of "K iltartanizing" and
Bowdlerizing this major legacy of the ancient conscience is best i l
lustrated in her preface—the tenor of which amply displays what
Joyce was revolting from:
. . . the stories themselves are confused . . . the
way there is not m uch pleasure in reading them. I t
is what I have tried to do, to take . . . whatever parts
of each w ill f i t best . . . I le f t out a good deal I
thought you would not care about for one reason or
another . . . I have told the whole story in plain and
simple words, in the sam e way m y old nurse Mary Sheridan
used to be te llin g stories from the Iris h long ago, and
I a child at Roxborough (p. 5).
In fairness to Lady Gregory, one must suppose that even Homer's task
was not .dissim ilar—to. select and forge a single work from a massive
agglomeration of ancient fragments and oral tra d itio n . The results,
unfortunately, do not admit of comparison. The K iltartan dialect is
perilously close to 'country cute' and diminishes u tte rly what is ,
afte r a l l , one of the true epics of the ancient race. Though not in
ten tio n ally, the tone condescends, reducing a formidable saga to the
level of an old nurse's ta le . Even the casual scholar must wince at
this feeling of 'playing peasant,' and that by a lady of the manor who,
in suppressing the "distressing" vulgarity and obscenity of the
m aterials, managed to sap the original of its unique power and mystery.
Lady Gregory, as Joyce once said of Mangan, "inherits the late s t and
worst part of a legend... .and knows not how to change i t , as the
strong s p ir it knows and would bequeath it" (CW, p. 82).
42
But i f Gregory's condescending folksiness diminishes the Ulster
cycle, Yeats' introduction goes even further to diminish the stature of
the ancient poets who created i t —an attitude which must set Joyce
forever in the opposite camp. Yeats begins with the lines quoted by
Mulligan in Ulysses: "I think this book is the best that has com e out
of Ireland in m y time" (p. 11). Yeats stops short of saying "one
thinks of Homer," but he praises Gregory extravagantly fo r simplifying
an epic to the standards of a Mary Sheridan, and then proceeds at great
length to sim plify the poets w ho created the originals. For Yeats, .
they are untutored sto ry-tellers w ho created th e ir immense sagas to
while away the "winter evenings," and he reminds us that this lite r a
ture "never ceased to_.be.f.ol.k-lore even when i t was recited in the
Courts, o f_ Kings" (p .. 12). He characterizes the ancient poets as . ,r*
naifs; primitives w ho created "for the learned and unlearned a lik e , a
communion of heroes, a cloud of stalwart witnesses; but because they
were as m uch excited as a m onk over his prayers, they did not think
s u ffic ie n tly about the shape of a poem or story." I f these, then,
were the Iris h poets, one must wonder aloud why anyone would bother
with the "stories"—or conclude with the English masters that the
Iris h were mere savages before English culture was m ercifully provided
for them. Yeats' folk-enthusiasm has carried him to the point of say4
ing that within the Iris h heritage the a rtis t was nearly irrelevan t,
and deliberate c ra ft unimportant, compared to the sensations and moral
43,
idealism inculcated in the listeners. That the condition of the
originals might be due to a thousand years' m utilation and tampering
seems not to have occurred to Yeats' mind, nor does he evince any
recognition of the elaborate poetic institutions of ancient times. I t
is a curious position for Yeats—an intolerable one for Joyce. N o
doubt i t was this attitud e of.Yeats' that prompted Joyce's remark to
the older poet in 1902 "that his ow n mind 'was m uch nearer to G od than
fo lk lo re .'" 25
A s early as P o rtrait of the A rtis t Joyce set the ancient poet's
calling in direct equation with that of the Catholic p riest. W e see
Stephen dumbly worshipping in a grove of trees, d irectly implying the
Druidical role: indeed, Stephen eventually opts for that older poetic
priesthood, the essence of which Joyce fin a lly displays nakedly in
Finnegans W ake when Shem raises the life-w ant and strikes speech from
the stones. For Joyce, the ancient heritage provided a model of the
poet which certainly le f t no room for befuddled old ta le -te lle rs nod
ding around the cottage f ir e , as his "slating" of Gregory's la te r
Poets and Dreamers demonstrates. I t would remain for Brian O'Nolan to
deliver the coup-de-grace (in Iris h ) to the fo lk ifie rs in 1941 with his
An Beal Bocht: for Joyce, the struggle with the old m an in the West
would be a fa r more serious and in tric a te undertaking.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Revival a is le , the p h ilo lo -L ;
gists and Celtic scholars were actively mounting th e ir ow n defense of
the ancient conscience. P.W. Joyce, .in his 1903 edition of The Social
44
History of Ancient Ireland remonstrates gently:
As to the moral tone of the ancient Iris h tales . . .
there is m uch plain speaking of a character that
would now be considered coarse, and would not be
tolerated in our present social and domestic lif e .
But on the score of morality and purity the Irish
tales . . . are m uch freer from-objectionable matter
than the works of many of these early English and
Continental authors which are now regarded as classics
. . . they are at least as pure as Shakespeare's plays;
and the worst of them contains verv_much less grossness
than som e of the Canterbury Tales. ^
But despite remonstrances and protests, scholars lik e P.W. Joyce,
O'Curry, and Kuno Meyer were conservative historians and translators.
The massive studies they produced record more than in te rp re t, and in
the end they do l i t t l e to rescue the racial heritage from that night
mare of calumnious history formulated by Strabo, Caesar, Cambrensis,
and the rest.
There was, as w e ll, an additional in te rio r barrier to exploring
the Irish heritage s tric tly on its ow n terms. Unfortunately, many of
the minds engaged in rebuilding an "a l1-history" of Europe through
C eltic studies were not, lik e Jeremiah Curtin, disinterestedly seeking
"a basic as firm as that which lies under geology." The influ en tial
German pioneers w hom Joyce lauds in his 1907 essay were intent upon
discovering in C eltic materials further ju s tific a tio n for th e ir con
ceptions of 'Aryan' man. The myth of Aryan man, so all-pervading in
the nineteenth century, was a larger historical phenomenon, of which
C eltic studies, for the Germans, was but one facet of a grand design.
45
Irish writers and scholars were certainly no strangers to the Aryan
ideal ‘either:: one finds in th e ir works numerous avowals that the
Celts were "of course Aryans." The Aryan supremacy myth, in subtle
Nietzschean undertones, manifests its e lf in som e of Yeats' aristo cratic
presumptions, and even Joyce was not im mune to this current of the
times: in the schoolboy essay "Force" he candidly observes, "Am ong
hum an fam ilies the white m an is the predestined conqueror" (C M , p. 20).
The.pioneer German scholars desired to find (and therefore did find)
evidence of a monolithic patriarchal society governed by the stern
principles of a Marrior Code, and dedicated to the g lo rific a tio n of
gods akin to those of the Rom ans and Teutons. In fin e , the German
scholars tended to project onto Iris h m aterials, m uch as Caesar had
projected onto the people of Gaul, a shape and meaning governed by
th e ir ow n preconceptions and desires. Iris h translators and scholars
had even greater sub jectivity, in that th e ir work was inextricably
bound up in the pressure to ju s tify the race and create a national
ideal. They desired to unfold a herioc past graced by ancestors w ho
attained to ideas as noble as those of ancient Greece: this was par
tic u la rly true of the lite ra ry "He!lenizers" who, relying mainly on
the Ulster cycle,-were prone to style those materials "The Iris h
Ilia d " and label Cuchulain "the Iris h A chilles,"
A central d iffic u lty in the scholarly reconstruction of C eltic
society, p articu larly in reconstructing the philosophical principles
46.
on which i t was b u ilt, is the marked absence throughout the source
lite ra tu re its e lf of any reference to relig ion or religious precepts.
Aside from the formulaic repetition of "I swear by the gods m y people
swear byt;" not one prayer is uttered; nothing is sacrificed; no nam e
is invoked; no a lta r approached. Moreover, there appears to be no
retrib u tive punishment meted out,, nor any fear of the same. Using
text alone, i t is nearly impossible to deduce that the Celts had any
notion of gods whatever, nor any compulsion to obey them. Anthropo
logists continue to be baffled by such lacunae, and conclusions that
the Celts.simply had no'religion are not unknown. In Ulysses, Haines
cannot resist a suavely malicious reminder of this situation: he
casually informs Buck that he has been reading Julius Pokorny w ho
". . . can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said,
amid the cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of
destiny, of retribution" (p. 249). Pokorny notwithstanding, few
C eltic scholars of the era were w illin g to accept the idea that an
'Aryan1 people so gifted in lite ra tu re and the decorative arts could
have been altogether uninterested in philosophic principles and/or
the w ill of a deity: i t was tantamount to saying that a vast race of
people, covering most o f the European continent for centuries were,
morally speaking, as formless and unconcerned as a herd of deer. The
implications for Irish C e ltic is ts , as Haines' barb indicates, were
especially devastating. A fter the '1900 decision' i t became imperative
to create or discover a responsible text which would present a whole,
47-
uni fied C eltic ethical system, a d e fin itiv e rebuttal to the continuing
jibes of the 'sea's cold ru le rs .'
A work which did undertake to reconstruct the "whole system of
religion" that Curtin had dreamed of in 1894 was Henri d'Arbois de
OO
Jubainvilie's The Iris h Myth Cycle and C eltic Mythology. In 1903,
in the midst of the morality b a ttle , Richard Best published his trans
lation of Jubainville. Best's l i t t l e volume, which the character
Haines apparently rejects in favor of Hyde's Lovesongs in the lib rary
episode of Ulysses, represents but a small portion of Jubainville's
C eltic studies: i t is significant that the portion Best chose to
translate at this time deals solely with the all-im portant issue of
the C eltic relig io n . Best, w hom Joyce encountered in Paris while the
former was at work on the book, no doubt hoped to make the French
scholar's findings more accessible to the Iris h reading public and
thereby help the Revival cause. Given the circumstances, and the
pointed reference in Ulysses, i t is very unlikely that Joyce would
not have read Best's translation: Joyce kept a very keen eye on the
productions of his contemporaries, and none the less keen for being
scornful.
In the face of th eir embarrassing problem, C eltic scholars used
two methods for deriving a religion for the strange society which
appeared so sturdily disinterested in moral argument. The f ir s t of
these was historical and tra d itio n a l, u tiliz in g the Classical commenta-
tors--mostly prominently Caesar's D e Bello Gallico and the interp retatib
48
Romana. As we have seen, the approach yielded a good deal of heated
negation—but not m uch in the way of a positive answer. The second
method was an embryonic anthropological approach: the existing texts
were divided into three groups, and the "early" ones were treated not
as trib a l histories but a's religious documents, C eltic 'scrip tu res,' as
i t were. Long before Joyce came upon Vico's theory of three ages ac
companied by three levels of lite ra ry utterance, the remains of his ow n
racial heritage had been divided into the sam e categories: the Book
of Invasions and its attendant materials were designated the cycle of
the gods; the Red Branch or Ulster materials were designated the
cycle o f heroes or demi-gods, and the Fenian group was accepted as the
cycle of the people, or men. A fourth group, having no apparent con
tin u ity with the three major cycles, was labeled the Historical Kings
group. Then, by studying the attributes and actions of the characters
in the f ir s t cycle as religious utterance, a somewhat coherent b e lie f
pattern might be extrapolated for the Celts.
Like Keating before him, Jubainville offers a note of resistance
to the f ir s t method. Perhaps as a Frenchman and descendant of the . .
Gauls he was more uncomfortable with the R om an testimonies than were
his German counterparts. At any rate, Jubainville begins with the
declaration, "W e cannot accept without ju s tific a tio n the assertion
of Caesar, from which one would seem ju s tifie d in concluding that the
religion of the Gauls was identical with that of the Romans. W e must
49
consult other texts than the one quoted ‘hbove" [De Bello G a llic o j.-
His approach w ill be anthropological: "we o ffer a solution to som e of
the principal d iffic u ltie s , connected with a subject so worthy of an
historian. I t is not a hand-book of C eltic mythology . . . but an
essay oh the fundamental principles of that mythology" (Introduction,
p. xv). Jubainville is bent on isolating the particularness of the
C eltic b e lie f, "sprung from the genius peculiar to the C eltic race,"
but he is not w illin g to fly in the face of trad itio n altogether: "we
hope i t w ill be considered in our favor that we have respected the
ancient order in which Ireland has long since classified the fabulous
tales that constitute the trad ition al form of her mythology. In sub
s titu tin g for this arrangement, consecrated by the ages, a newer and
more methodical classific a tio n , w e whould have broken to pieces in our
hands the very picture we wished to hold up to view" (p. 1). Contrary
to Curtin's simple assumption that the religious materials of the Celts
were suppressed and eventually lo s t, Jubainville construes a religious
system from existing documents. The author's chapter headings indicate
his method—Chapter I I contains "The C eltic Doctrine of the Origin of
Man," Chapter V treats "Innundation in Iris h and Greek Mythology,"
while Chapter VI explores "Battles of the Gods in Iris h , Greek, Indian,
and Iranian Mythology." I t is an uneven performance, at times wholly
unconvincing, as in the case for a C eltic creation myth. To support
his case, Jubainville has gone back behind R om an mythology to Greek
50
fir s t principles; but as he struggles to "draw out a single line of
beauty"—or even coherence-through The Book of Invasions, i t becomes
clear that he has armed himself with his own preconceived system, and
is applying i t as a rb itra rily as Caesar enforced his.
Jubainville. had a radical (for the time) notion of the origins of
the race, lent credence by passages in Invasions which relate that
Nem ed and his people were: of Greek stock, and further, that after the
disastrous Fomorian wars, two of the three remaining Nemedian tribes : ■
returned to Greece, whereothey evolved into the Firbolgs and the Tuatha
de Danann respectively before returning in two successive waves to
29
reclaim Ireland. Jubainville's theory is, then, that:
The characteristic com m on to Irish and Greek mythology
come from an old foundation of Graeco-Celtic legends
anterior to the separation of the two races at that
unknown period when the Hellenes or Greeks, abandoning
to the Celts the cold valleys of the Danube and the
mist-laden regions of western Europe, settled down
on the warm plains and the splendid coasts of the
Peninsula lying to the South, (p. 69, emphasis added):
This was heady fare indeed for all those looking for a means of glo ri
fying the Celtic race. Perhaps Jubainville also had!in mind the tan
talizing questions of why the beseigers of Troy in the IIiad and the
beseigers of the Fomorians in the Invasions are both called "Dananns."
Jubainville's book offers us one of the early instances--though by no
means the last—of Greek-Celt confronting Celt-Greek. Throughout the
Revival, the notion of a shared Graeco-Celtic ancestry was com m on
currency, inspiring not only the ubiquitous ’ Irish Ilia d s ,' 'Achilles,'
511
'Helens,' and the lik e , but ultimately a strange young Irishman with an
outlandish Greek name, Stephen Dedal us.
Convinced of the Graeco-Celtic link, Jubainville uses Hesiod's
Works and Days to build an arduous analogy between the Golden, Silver,
and Brazen ages of the Greek archetypal gods and the "corresponding"
Parthalonian, Nemedian, and Danann epochs in the Book of Invasions. In
his determination to discover principles of moral judgment in the
Celtic 're lig io n ,' Jubainville often creates philosophic dilemmas as
thorny as those he is attempting to resolve. To begin with, Jubain-
v ille assigns to Parthaloneis fir s t age the silver of Hesiod because,
as Jubainville finds them, the Parthalonians lacked wisdom. To the
following Nemedians cum Firbolgs he assigns the bronze, while to the
succeeding Tuatha de Danann he awards the gold because they are the
wisest and most obviously lordly of the three groups. This scrambling
of the ages confounds the neat, logical descending order of Hesiod's
original Gold, Silver, and Bronze, confounding as well the possibility
of progressive relationship amonst the gods and the rational links be
tween the descending order of the gods and the ascending order of m en
until their ultimate relationship to each other is established. De
spite Hesiod, in Jubainvi 11 e.'s handling the Celtic gods seem to waver
uncertainly not towards, but away from the concerns of men. To explain
the increasing anomalies as his argument continues, Jubainville fin a lly
resorts to declaring:
52
Celtic mythology is not copied from Greek mythology.
I t is based upon conceptions originally identical . . .
but has developed the fundamental elements of the myth
in a manner of her own, which is as independent as i t
is original (p. 165).
He nonetheless persists in his Hesiod analogy, and i t becomes clear, as
the book progresses, that although rejecting the Rom an lookingglass was
a promising fir s t step, the lookingglass proffered by Jubainville is
quite as programmatic and, alas, has serious cracks in its own.
But most curious of a l l —in a study devoted to extrapolating the
"independent" and "original" religion of the Celtic race—Jubainville
completely subverts the central testimony of his "golden race" its e lf.
The fuatha de Danann are so called because they are the people of Anu
or Danu—their female god.. The river Danube is so named for her, and
is , in Jubainville's ow n text (to paraphrase Simon Dedalus), where the
Greeks le ft the Celts. The author gives us the name derivation, and
even elaborates on an explanation of the god: Anu or Danu, he ex- ■ ]
plains, manifests herself in trip lic a te form; in Jubainville's sources
as trip le t sons, Brian, Iuchar, and Uar, whose names mean respectively
"knowledge," "art," and "poetry." These sons have no father, but are
simply trip a rtite emanations of Danu herself, collectively referred to
as "Ecne," a word meaning "knowledge, letters, poetry" inclusively
(p. 211). This would appear to be a relatively straightforward pre
sentation of who the god of the Celts is: moreover, the trip a rtite
female Danu would provide a logical conceptual link to the trip lic a te
IxF
female s p irit to w hom the succeeding Milesians had to swear loyalty be
fore they could supplant the Dananns. Jubainville, however, following
the etymological tradition of Keating and others, translates the tribal
nam e to mean "people of the children of Danu," or, therefore, of the
three sons, or more succinctly, of the single male god Ecne. The
etymological foundations for this interposition of the three 'sons' be
tween Danu and her people is lost in antiquity, but the reasons for its
perpetuation are probably less etymological than cultural. Within the
purview of the nineteenth-century turmoil to exalt 'Aryan' man— indeed,
in the broad perspective of a patriarchalized Christian world's accep
tance of male supremacy on all issues—the possibility that a vast
group of 'Aryans' acknowledged a female as their supreme deity was
quite simply ungraspable by the scholarly (or any other) mind: minor
goddesses certainly; but a female supreme being was beyond imagining.
And so, in the ensuing study of the great warrior-struggle for suprema
cy between Fomorian and Danann, Danu and her trip a rtite emanations dis
appear forever from the-text, eclipsed by the emerging male power-
figures.
Tenaciously clinging to his Greek-Celt formula, Jubainville con
structs a paradigm for Celtic belief in a father-god who represents
the underworld or Death. Like Kronos, Jubainville reasons, the Irish
Tethra, king of the Fomorians, was father of all the gods and fir s t
principle of the Celtic concept of worship. Jubainville parallels
54
Hesiod's battle of the Titans with the battle of Nemed's people (the
Firbolgs) and their cousins the Dananns, in the fir s t and second bat
tles of Moytura. From.these battles he extrapolates a dualistic r e li
gion which pits the gods of the underworld, Fomorians, against the gods
of ligh t. The Dananns especially he sees as gods of Life, Love, and
Art. One could, of course, deduce this from their very nam e with no
aid from Hesiod or recourse to battles. But Jubainville stubbornly
chooses the Greek way-arriving fin a lly at the emergence of Daghda as
the new father of the Irish gods, the Irish Zeus. Here, Jubainville's
conclusions belie the Irish texts themselves: he has no explanation as
to why Daghda, now presumably the supreme god of the Dananns, is de
picted in the texts as a fun-figure; ludicrous, slovenly, drunken, and
the butt of numerous jokes. There is T ittle in Irish text to suggest
that Daghda is father of the gods. He is clearly, the god of clever
ness and invention—the "good" god, meaning good at doing things (this
is probably what led everyone astray from Caesar onward), but he is
never depicted with anything like the stature of a Zeus. Before the
second battle of Moytura, Daghda, along with his two brothers Lug and
Ogma, must go "to the three gods of Danu, and these gave Lug the plan
30
of battle." I t is a very strange supreme god whose powers are s t ill
so very overmatched by Danu's. Moreover, her 'trip le ts ' give the plan
to Lug, and even Jubainville is forced to admit, "The Daghda is theo
retically the supreme god; but Lug . . . appears to hold a more
55.
important place in Celtic mythology than the Daghda" (p. 165). He
does not admit, However, that even Lug is under the domination of Danu.
Once again, as in Keati rig1 s Hi story, we confront a symbolic juxtaposi
tion of three brothers interacting with three yet stranger 'brothers,'
all under the shadowy auspices of a remote, powerful female s p irit who
dominates their actions. And once again, the possible significance of
the configuration is ignored in favor of the battle-spectacle.
I t is only with extreme d iffic u lty that Jubainville manages to
sustain the dualistic religion he has construed for the Celts. The
dichotomy of Fomorian/Danann, Death/Life, Dark/Light, Evil/Good con
tinually threatens to collapse as the reader struggles to follow the
argument. One source of weakness is that the author is quite insistent
that all of the invasionary groups emanate, not from lite ra l Greece as
the texts record, but from mythic Mag Mell, the "Flowery Plain" of
Irish legend, which Jubainville repeatedly equates with Hades, land of
the dead, in order to maintain his Hesiod p ara lle l. Moreover, ■
Jubainville wants to insist that the underworlds of both mythologies
are equated with e v il, an assertion not ju stified in either tradition,
and especially inappropriate to the Irish. In his effort to bolster
dualism, Jubainville once again belies the Irish 'scriptures." In
Irish texts, Mag Mell is consistently presented as a land of joy, sere
nity, beautiful w om en and immortal pleasure. Irish myth is pervaded
with this 'other world': i t takes many names in many ages--The Land of
Fair W om en, Tir-na-Nog, The Land Under Wave, The Land of
56
Promise. In no case is i t ever presented as a place of evil: its most
significant feature is that i t is a land in which there is no s trife.
One must conclude that Jubainville's reliance on Hesiod's.schema led
him fin a lly into an unavoidable distortion of Irish text. The Book of
Invasions says "Greece" unequivocally, and while that bald reading
raises the suspicion that the entire Invasions cycle is an example of
euhemerization, accepting the lite ra l place of origin would have spared
Jubainville the impossible task of proving Mag Mell a place of e v il.
Mag-Mell, as Jubainville did not seem to understand quite clearly, is
unquestionably the domain of Manapaan Mac L ir, and its place in the
Celtic order of things fa lls far outside the structure of Greek mytho
logy and thus cannot be accommodated in Jubainville's scheme.
The dualistic religion Jubainville so arduously ( i f tenuously)
erected does, admittedly, rescue him from the 'Pokorny' dilemma of an
absence of any moral idea whatever, and the author pursues i t dogmatir
cally, despite contradictory evidence from the Irish texts: "Along
with this dualism the Irish pagans, by somewhat striking contradiction,
associated pantheistic beliefs . . ." (p. 221). Yet he dismisses the
water and place gods with "But all these divinities hold but a subor
dinate place in the Celtic mind. The great gods are those whose
desperate battles inspired the bardic tales . . . I t was they above
all others, who received the homage of the fa ith fu l." Ironically, as
his picture of "the genius peculiar to the Celtic race" unfolds, he
57-
begins to rely more and more heavily on those sam e Rom an commentaries
he at fir s t belied, arriving fin a lly at the construct that the Celts
worshipped "evil parent gods, w hom the Irish called Fomorians. They
were honored by hum an sacrifice . . . These dreadful immolations were
especially made during the war . . . their slaughter was a religious
ceremony" (p. 213). The authority for this statement is of course
De Bello Gallico, not the Book of Invasions. Throughout Jubainville's
book the Rom an commentaries inexorably erode the Graeco-Celtic paradigm.
Yet in the midst of Jubainville's wan effort to organize and re
kindle the "broken lights of Irish myth," he raises an issue which was
to become a recurrent motif in Joyce's Ulysses—the role of metempsy
chosis in Celtic religion. Almost as i f to rescue the darkening pic- *
ture of Celtic philosophical vision, Jubainville turns to one of the
oldest of the traditional arguments for a Celtic religion, or at least
for som e type of Celtic moral vision—the doctrine of metempsychosis.
One can imagine the kind of sardonic amusement Jubainville's Chapter XV
afforded the Jesuitical mind of James Joyce. Under the heading "The
Belief in the Immorality of the Soul in Ireland and Gaul" we find
listed , "1. The Immortality of the Soul in the Legend of Mongan.
2. Did the Celts hold the Pythagorean Doctrine of Metempsychosis?
Opinions of the Ancients. 3. The Pythagorean and Celtic Doctrines
compared." Richard ETlmann has pointed out that Joyce had in his
Trieste library som e works from which he may have gleaned the materials
on metempsychosis that go into the early chapters of Ulysses. In
58
addition to those sources, Joyce would have been fam iliar with the
metempsychosis argument from even the most casual acquaintance with
Revival materials. And i t seems hardly coincidental that in 'Circe'
Joyce brings together in one brief hallucinatory moment the identical
configuration of factors we find in Jubainville's chapter. O n page
518 of Ulysses, Joyce makes allusion to Valerius Maximus through "The
31
Siamese twins Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons." The
twins' function in the-passage is to reflect the confused content of
Stephen's mind, with special emphasis on Pythagorus, whose nam e cannot
be recalled: ". . . I f I could only find out about octaves. Redupli
cation of personality. W ho was i t told m e his name?" In the long his
torical perspective, i t was Valerius Maximus who connected the Celts
with Pythagorus' name: in the immediate context of Stephen's surround
ings, the "who" might well be Jubainville himself--especially as the
translator Best shows up on the scene very shortly.
The question of Celtic belief in metempsychosis began in 31 A.D.
when, as Jubainville reports, "Valerius Maximus, writing of the Gauls
and their doctrine of immortality of the soul says that he 'would
treat them as fools i f these wearers of breeches did not hold the
same beliefs . . . as Pythagorus professed in his philosopher's man-',
tie '" (p. 197). This is possibly the earliest record we have of a
defense of the Celts as something more than a 'lesser breed without
the law.* The argument went round and round in ancient times, with
59
appropriate comments from Caesar, Pliny, and others; and when Celtic
research revived in the nineteenth century i t went round and round
again. Douglas Hyde in his History simply comments even-handedly that
"Caesar te lls that Celts believed that mens' souls do not die but
passed over after death from one into another." P.W. Joyce is opposed:
"There are accordingly no grounds whatever for asserting that the an-
32
cient Irish believed in the doctrine of general metempsychosis."
Eleanor Hull in A Textbook of Irish Literature is in the Joyce cam p •
with a denial. Those who upheld the case for metempsychosis did so
because i t associated the early Celts with the high thought of ancient
Greece and the prestige of Pythagorus. Those who denied Valerius'
assertion did so because textual evidence for such a belief is so
tenuous i t can scarcely be said to exist. In either case, the metem
psychosis controversy was ubiquitous to the Revival movement, and
Jubainville's conclusions on the subject could scarcely have made any
of the Irish scholars happy. Jubainville observes that while the Celts
did believe in metempsychosis to som e degree, they did not have the
belief that the next world held punishment or reward for deeds done in
this one. "Pythagorus . . . sees in the other life a sanction for the
laws of justice respected or violated in this. The Celtic race had
not this hope" (p. 199). He concludes then that the Celts were in
ferior in philosophy, and that in the once-vaunted Celtic a fte r -life ,
the "Gaulish warrior hoped to continue there the life of combat which
.60
had been his honour and glory in this world." And so,'after laborious
ly reconstructing the 'meaning' of The Book of Invasions upon resem
blances to the 'whole system' of Hesiod's Theogony, Jubainville leaves,
us a picture of the Celts as a sort of pale carbon copy of the Teu-r-r
tons—a world already fam iliar in the stoic "Germanic warrior code" of
Anglo-Saxon lite ra tu re , complete with a sort of Valhalla for warriors
only: a people worshipping a god of darkness and in love with giving
and receiving death. Jubainville does establish a kind of heroism
for the Celts, but he fa ils to discover and delineate the "moral idea."
And the moral idea—an enobling belief-system—was what the Revival,
especially Dr. Hyde's Revival, was bent on having. Jubainville's clo
sing image—the doomed Celt standing before his dun, his spear in one
hand and the other arm around his children, stoically watching the
approach of racial annihilation—may have been the stuff of the lit e r
ary movement's Twilight creations: i t would not do for m en devoted to
justifying and preserving the living Celts of Ireland. Jubainville's
work did not succeed in refuting the historic calumnies; in the end
he (and Best along with him) unfortunately managed only to be swallowed
up in the insatiable 'Callico Belly.' And the metempsychosis issue
which alone had palliated the reputation of the ancient Celts staggered
to its end in Jubainville's lectures, leaving the field to the Pokornys
Indeed, so pervading the concept of Celtic immorality remain in the
Western mind, that even Judge John Woolsey, in his decision to l i f t the
61
obscenity ban on Ulysses in 1933, gave as part of his reason, . . i t
must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic . . ." (U ^, p. x).
I t was clear by the end of 1903 that, despite the formidable
efforts of P.W. Joyce, August Gregory, Richard Best, et. a l., the
Irish Homer had yet to be found; and so the search intensified. In
the library episode of Ulysses the "great man" (AE) scurries out pre
sumably to continue that very search—leaving Mr. Best- and his l i t t l e
book bested; an in an abundance of Joycean irony, leaving beind,
unheard, the most obvious candidate—Stephen Dedal us, who has spent
part of his morning walking the beach in blind Homer's steps. But i f
there was to be an Irish Homer—and Joyce leaves l i t t l e doubt as to
who that Homer will be—i t was already evident from the efforts of
the previous candidates that he would have to evolve a new point of
view, a new way of seeing. He would have to abandon the eastward-fa
cing attitude that culled Greece for correspondences and Gaul for in
sights. The national poet would have to turn to the west, where, as
Yeats well knew, the race survived in anything like an unmixed con
tinuity. But an Irish Homer would have to avoid even there the p it
fa lls of the 1fo lk ifie r s ,1 and skirt with care the diminished ramblings
of workhouse inmates and their pookah fables. These are not the stuff
of racial epic.
The Irish or Celtic works specifically cited by Joyce in Ulysses
as constituting Stephen's "historical and religious literatures4 " are
62,
The Book of!the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote, Garland o f Howth, and The
Book of Kells (p. 688). The la tte r two works are Christian: a col
lection of Saints' lives and the Four Gospels respectively, and so a
part of a tradition which has already been thoroughly explicated in the
text of the novel. The Book of Ballyinote is more pertinent in the cur
rent context. I t contains, in addition to The Book of Invasions, a
history of the most remarkable w om en in Ireland down to the English
invasion; genealogies of the principal Irish families; the Pissenchas
or eponymous history of place-names in Ireland; an Irish redaction of
the expeditions of Jason and the Argonauts; and fin a lly , the Irish
version of the Trojan War. The significance of the two last-named
items to a poet named Dedal us and/or a novel cal led Ulysses is imme
diately apparent. But i t . i s the Celtic rather than the Graeco-Roman
heritage which concerns us most, and the primary focus must be on The
Book of the Dun Cow, which contains the materials of the Ulster cycle,
including an imperfect copy of The Tain. The Ulster cycle is of p ri
mary importance to Ulysses for many reasons, not the least of which is
its survival as the only work of true epic proportion and design in
the ancient literatu re. The Ulster cycle alone, of the surviving le
gacy of the pagan race, has the stature and the possibilities of unity
which lend themselves to a novel of epic design. But while the Revival
had already proclaimed the Ulster cycle as "the Irish Ilia d ," and its
prominant warrior Cuchulain "the Irish Achilles," they had uniformly
63
overlooked the obvious fact that The Book of the Dun Cow is equally
the great saga of the queen of Cannaught—Maeve of Cruachan--and of
her hosts, the Connaughtmen of the west. In their rush to exalt the
heroic, the Revival had subverted the testimony of the west to f i t a
paradigm of Greek correspondencesvin,the east. I f , as Jubainville
claimed, "Celtic mythology is not copied from Greek mythology," but
instead had developed an archetypal pattern of its ow n "as independent
as i t is original," then the Revival had certainly failed to discover
wherein the originality lay.
W hen Joyce chose to place The Book of the Dun C ow not against the
IIia d , but against the Odyssey in Ulysses, he had a far different v i
sion in mind, as the radical shift from the war-book to the domestic
drama-book of Homer indicates. Joyce set out, like so many before him,
to achieve Curtin's dream of using the intact belief-system of one
race to reconstruct the fragmented remains of another; but with this
difference: Joyce approached the materials as his character Stephen
had learned to approach the clocks and store-fronts of Dublin--he
waited patiently for the materials to reveal their "whatness" to him.
In this, James Joyce remains unique—and to tally aloof from the s p irit
of the Revival. He made no'.attempt to reduce the Irish materials to
a com m on Hellenic denominator. And armed with this attitude he
achieved, perhaps, what hundreds of scholars and writers before him
had failed to do: he recovered from the broken fragments that
— ^
"uniquely Celtic insight" Kain speaks of. What this uniquely Celtic
point of view, this "single line of beauty" was and is, can best be
unravelled by reviewing the materials with which Joyce began to forge
the created--or deliberately shattered--conscience of the race.
65
Notes
^ In The Letters of James Joyce, ed. Stuart Gilbert and Richard
Ellman, (New York: Viking Press, 1957), I I , 248.
2
op. c i t . , p. 267.
o • •
O
As quoted by Richard Ellman in James Joyce (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1965), p. 520.
4 Richard Ellman, The Consciousness of James Joyce (London:
Faber and Faber, 1977), p. 90.
The Letters of James Joyce, I , 218.
Stanislaus Joyce, M y Brother's Keeper (New York: Viking Press,
1969), p. 123.
^ Letters, I I , 187.
O
Wayne Hal 1, Shadowy Heroes: Irish Literature of the 1890's
(Syracuse: Syracuse University.Press, 1980).
9 George Moore, The Untilled Field (1903; rpt. England: Colin
Smyth L td .,!1976), p. 319.
Ellman, James Joyce, p. 336.
^ James Joyce, The Critical Writings, ed. Ellworth Mason and
Richard Ellman (New York: Viking Press, 1964), p. 235.
56
^2 op. c it ., pp. 153-174.
^ Letters, I I , 111 and 122.
14 op. c i t . , p. 194.
15
David Greene and Frank O'Connor, A Golden Treasury of Irish
Poetry: A.D. 600 to 1200 (London: MacMillan, 1967), p. 105.
1 ft
Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, from The Gallic War and other
Writings of Julius Caesar, trans. Moses Hadas (New York: The Modern
Library, 1957), p. 135.
Giraldus Cambrensis, The Historical Works of Giraldus
Cambrensis, trans. Thomas Forster and Sir Richard Colt Hoare, ed.
Thomas Wright (London: H. G. Bohn, 1863), p. 140.
1R
Geoffrey Keating, The History of Ireland: from the Earliest
Period to the English Invasion, trans. John 0'Mahony (New York: P.M.
Haverty, 1857), p. x v ii.
19
Eugene O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Iris h .
(Dublin: W . B. Kelly, 1873), I I , 194.
on
Patrick Ford, The Mabinogi and other Medieval Welsh Tales
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 9.
pi
I am indebted for this phrase to Stuart Hampshire, "Joyce and
Vico: The Middle Way," New York Review of Books (New York: XX 16,
1973), pp. 8-21.
22 Hall, p. 47.
23 Augusta Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902; rpt. Gerrards
Cross: Colin Smyth Ltd., 1976), p. 7.
67
24 See Hall, p. 124.
25
As quoted in the Introduction of Stephen Hero, eds. John J.
Slocum and Herbert Cahoon (New York: New Directions, 1963), p. 5.
2^ Brian O'Nolan (Flann O'Brien), An Bdal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) ,
trans. Patrick C. Power (1941; trans. London: Hart-Davis MacGibbon,
1973)
27
Patrick Weston Joyce, The Social History of Ancient Ireland
(London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903), I , 549-550.
28
Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville, The Irish Myth Cycle and Celtic
Mythology, trans. Richard I. Best (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co. Ltd.,
1903.
29
See Tom Peete Cross and Clark Harris Slover, eds., Ancient
Irish Tales (New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., 1936), pp. 6-11.
^ Cross and Slover, p. 38.
"Philip Drunk to Philip Sober" was, and apparently s t ill is, a
com m on catch-phrase am ong the educated in the British Isles, including
Joyce. One finds the phrase as a heading in The Oxford Companion to
English Literature, ed. Sir Paul Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1934), p. 611, where i t is defined as a reference to Valerius Maximus'
tale of the judgments of Philip of Macedon. Joyces uses the phrase to
refer obliquely to Valerius himself.
Social History, p. 300.
68
Chapter I I
Joyce and the Materials:
Zimmer, the Couvade, and your Bitch of a Mother
Unlike the anthropologist or historian, hem m ed in by caution and
the ' i'fs* 'buts' and 'howevers' which bristle about his conjectures,
the a rtis t is free to make that quantum leap of imagination that sweeps
away all contradictions to his vision. It would be pleasing to a t t r i
bute Joyce's breakthrough to his singular genius alone (and no doubt i t
would have pleased Joyce for his contemporaries to do so.) But Joyce,
for all his genius, was very m uch a m an of his time; his works display
a sedulous absorption of the main currents of thought which swirled
through Dublin—a process which continued even after he had removed
himself from Ireland. I f Ulysses does reconstitute in som e degree the
ancient belief-system of the Celts via an unorthodox way of seeing the
old texts, then there remains one precedent view of the Irish materials
which cannot be ignored—for to do so would be to omit a link between
the public attitudes on the Celtic cycles and the development of 1
Joyce's own.
69
Amidst the currents of the morality controversy which plagued
Celtic scholarship, there was one scholar, Heinrich Zimmer, who had
developed his own radical way of seeing. Zimmer's theories on the
obscenity of Celtic literature were, in fact, so radical that they
ignited one of the more protracted scholarly wrangles of the Revival,
and of the larger fie ld of international Celtic study as well. W e
know that Joyce used Zimmer's theories on the Fenian cycle in con
structing Finnegans Wake, and that Joyce began the W ake with residual
materials from Ulysses: one must wonder then i f Zimmer's unique
Matriarchate theories on the Ulster cycle and Celtic texts in general
did not color Joyce's thinking on the earlier novel. Recently, the
W ake Newslitter reproduced a 1938 le tte r from Joyce to Louis G illet in
which he claims to have but recently 'discovered' that Zimmer's the-::
ories on Finn Mac Cool corroborated his own interpretation of Finn in
the Wake. Joyce draws a parallel between this independent corrobora
tion of his concepts by Zimmer and the like discovery after the fact
of a corroboration of his interpretation of the Odyssey in the works
of Victor Berard. This claim, that Joyce was entirely unfamiliar with
the work of Zimmer until 1938, seems suspiciously a Joycean attempt at
mythifying Joyce—a compounding of yet another of those "astounding
coincidences" he was nearly obsessed with finding. I t would be very
curious indeed for a writer who had culled the dusty archives of the
Germans for support as early as 1907 to have overlooked the work of
one of the most prominent and controversial Celtic commentators am ong
70
them. Even i f Joyce had somehow managed to overlook Zimmer's Matri-
archate theories on the Ulster cycle--which were available as early as
1891— i t is scarcely credible that he could have remained oblivious to
the feuding that Zimmer's work provoked am ong Celticists in and out
of the Revival. Clearly Stanislaus Joyce was well informed on the con
troversy, for he wrote to James in 1924, apropos of Work in Progress,
. .y o u began this fooling in the Holies Street episode in Ulysses
. . . The fir s t installment fain tly suggests the Book of the Four
Masters and a kind of Biddy in Blunderland and a satire on the supposed
2
matriarchal system . . . " Zimmer's theories on the Ulster cycle—"the
supposed matriarchal system"—roused a multitude of adherents and
detractors, ultimately goading the younger Rudolph Thurneyson, in a
3
group effo rt sponsored by the Royal Irish Academy to demolish Zimmer
(at least to his ow n satisfaction) in 1929. It suffices to say that
Heinrich Zimmer was a rather prominent rock in the Revival mainstream,
and i t is doubtful that he could have utterly escaped Joyce's notice
until 1938.
Zimmer's solution to the problem of immorality in Celtic lite r a
ture is one of the strangest, yet paradoxically one of the most fe rtile
performances in the annals of Celtic research. I t offers us at once an
illuminating insight into the s p irit of the times and one of the most
illuminating interpretations of the Irish texts: confoundingly, nei
ther the age nor Zimmer himself seemed ready to accept the logical
11
ramifications of his theories. N o one, including the primate of Armagh,
could have been more outraged by Celtic 'obscenity' than the Prussian
Zimmer:
In this society of Irish Heroic Saga and in legend,
too, the female figures, almost without exception,
bear an unspeakably com m on character, in contrast to
the principles of the social order. All the women,
matrons and maids, queens and chieftenesses, have the
vulgivaga deportment of the priestesses of Venus in
our modern centres of culture. They throw themselves
round the neck to-day of this one, to-morrow of that
one that pleases them, as Dio's Caledonian lady commends.
The brother sleeps with the sister, and begets a son by
her . . . three brothers in com m on impregnate their
sister, the son begets a son by his mother, the father
by his daughter, so that the mother of the offspring
is sister to the same . . . In the "Zeitschrift fiir
Deutsches Altertum," vol. 33, pp. 281-285, I have
adduced material, s tiflin g in its copiousness, from
the oldest Irish lite ratu re , and the same could be
heaped up s t ill further. Without exaggeration, I
believe I am able to maintain that the literatures
of all the Aryan peoples of olden times taken "to
gether" do not by a long way exhibit all the f ilth
which Irish Saga by its e lf has to show."4 [Ita lic s
m i ne].
Not d iffic u lt to detect Zimmer's sources here: Strabo, Cambrensis,
Keating's 'three Finnemnha' and all the rest peep out between every
line. The reference to "Dio's Caledonian Lady" is from Volume 14 of
Diodorus Siculus' History of the World (c. 50 BC).in which the queen of
Caledonia, reproved by a Rom an governor's wife for the licentious be
havior of Caledonian wom en in public, replies ta rtly that Caledonian
wom en are superior to Rom an—for while the la tte r prostitute themselves
in secret to the worst of men, Caledonian wom en openly enjoy their
liaisons with the best. Diodorus, needless to say, was as scandalized
12
as Zimmer.
This would scarcely seem promising fare for the Revival; yet this
quotation is taken not from the dusty archives proper, but from the
work of a Scots Revivalist, George Henderson. Zimmer's appeal for the
Revival lies in the fact that his theories offered what was perhaps the
only way out of the morality dilemma: Zimmer's explanation of the
'f ilt h ' discoverable in Celtic literature completely exonerates the
Celtic race for its presence there. Put simply, the 'f il t h ' piled up
in the literary heritage of the Aryan Celts was not their invention.
Such obscenities, Zimmer reasoned, could not be the product of pure
Aryan Gaels—whose patriarchal social order, he is quick to point out
above, was defied and defiled by such interjections: rather, the
obscene parts are vestigial traces of the beliefs and practices of the
inferior non-Aryan race overrun by the true Gaels. These were the ig
noble Piets, whose in ferio rity is borne out by the fact that they were
that most primitive of a ll social structures—a practicing Matriarchy.
"Am ong the remnants of the pre-Aryan primitive peoples of Britain
Matriarchy (mother-right) was s t ill in fu ll swing . . . wom en did not
take a particularly high place . . . THE MOTHER, however, and by
consequence the Birth, decides tribal membership, the Right of Inheri
tance" (p. 13). Under the matriarchal system as reported by Julius
Polyhistor (c. 34 A.D.) Hebridean kings were allowed no possessions—
not even a wife. This was done so that they would remain humble and
7.3
just through acquaintance with total poverty. In consequence, the
kings shared the wives of the tribe, turn by turn, and thus le ft no
provably 'legitim ate' issue, by patriarchal standards. Inheritance of
kingship was therefore determined on the king's sister's children:
"the son of the king was excluded from the succession except he were
at the same time the son of the king's sister . . . 1 will resist the
temptation to portray . . . a detailed picture . . ." (p. 28). But of
course he has already given i t in his catalogue of odious couplings.
Zimmer theorized that the invasion forces of the Aryan Celts
naturally thinned as they moved north to the traditional stronghold of
the Piets. In consequence, they were unable to obliterate the habits
and attitudes of the conquered peoples in what is now Ulster and Scot
land. While the Celts lived by the superior moral code of s tric t
monogamy and primogeniture, they had d iffic u lty imposing the same on
the numerically stronger Piets: "Accordingly, the customs of the van
quished primitives did not change at once, as . . . reminiscences of
the Irish Heroic Sagas prove. The most powerful lever for bringing
about change . . . was Christianity" (p. 30). Though even the Church
made 1it t le headway with the adamant Piets i t seems, as themes of fe
male dominance, power, and independence do not diminish even in Irish
texts of demonstrable historic periods. But Zimmer has an explanation:
"The concept of marriage and matrimonial fid e lity would, with the Piets,
have been more lax and more elastic . . . the tolerari posse {of the
w
Church] would have been extended as widely as possible in face of
Pictish national custom." W hy the customs of "vanquished primitives"
should have been so inordinately coddled—or why such customs should
have remained ascendant over the superior powers of the Aryan Celts and
Christianity for four hundred years is le ft unexplained. Zimmer simply
maintains that "the totally divergent Pictish Right of Succession—this
'rocher de bronce' of Mother Right" was s t i l l , after four hundred years,
"something quite unintelligible" to the Celts, "arousing their aston
ishment and wonder." They nonetheless, according to his theory, in
corporated great quantities of this 'filth y ' primitivism into their ow n
racial lite ra ry heritage--without, apparently, understanding that i t
was 'filth y ." I t is d iffic u lt to reconcile that the Celts, practicing
the superior moral code of monogamy and fid e lity , would not have recog
nized the presumptive incest and indecency of Pictish customs as_ im
morality, More d iffic u lt s t ill to envision what success the poets
could hope to have in incorporating lengthy recitals of “u n in tellig i
ble" material into their productions--particularly in oral tradition.
W e are le ft with the dilemma that the Celts, though superior morally,
could not make a moral judgment on the behavior of the Piets, or that,
knowing the Pictish rites to be indecent, they were willing to a t t r i
bute these acts to the heroes of their ow n sagas. Neither of these
assumptions seems especially plausible, anthropologically: they are
obviously designed to serve the ends of the German Aryan supremacy
75
myth. Zimmer relentlessly drives hom e the lesson that true Aryans
were eternally patriarchal and therefore morally superior: "stray
cases of juridical right li.e . mother-right] among 'Aryan' peoples,
Germans, Greeks, or Italians, do not ever indicate that these peoples
were once matriarchies— but that they conquered matriarchies at som e
dim, dim point," and, " . . . proof that the social order based upon
mother-right has anywhere 'without extraneous influence' developed i t
self into patriarchy . . . has not Ibeen] earnestly attempted; s till
less anywhere given" (p. 38). Matriarchy and patriarchy are "opposite
poles of development," with the inferior antecedent matriarchies pre
destined to suppression by the superior patriarchies. Matriarchy,
Zimmer admonishes, must always be regarded as "an order of society '
which its e lf does not develop its e lf into a patriarchy" (p. 39). In
fine, matriarchy is incapable of achieving the superior moral vision
of patriarchy: among hum an societal systems, i t is the necessary
sacrifice.
Heinrich Zimmer's celebrated Matriarchate theory is a convoluted
product of the Aryan-oriented German milieu, and one may feel in the
more heated rhetoric of som e of the above passages that fierce a lle
giance to male supremacy, that distrust of the female element, which
was to gain such force in the philosophic thinking of twentieth-century
Germany. One does not wish to suggest that Joyce adopted Zimmer's 'the
ories. uncritically (Stanislaus'!le tte r indicates irony). More probably
76
Joyce used Zimmer, as he used so many others, as a ‘whetstone;1 and
employed Zimmer's constructs, like Vico's, as "trellises" for his ow n
concepts. Certainly Joyce had scant respect for the 'Aryan'cult of his
own day: in Finnegans W ake he.has great sardonic fun with the 'long
skull versus round skull* and other disquisitions of the Aryan anthro-
pologizers--though by then i t was too late for satire, even b rillia n t
satire, to deflect the grim course of the Aryan supremacy myth. None
theless, Zimmer's matriarchal theory, despite his ow n prejudices, has
a germinal value for Celtic studies even today. For the Revival, i t
struck a new note, opened a new door, and before long adherents and
detractors were pouring through it--some few to "earnestly attempt" a
proof that patriarchies not only could, but in fact had evolved from
the mother-tree of matriarchy.
One of the earliest was Dr. George Henderson, from whose book,
Leabhar nan Gleann we have been quoting. Like the French Jubainville,
the Scottish Henderson seems not very comfortable with the patriarchal
interpretation of his own ancestors,^particularly with Zimmer's denun
ciations of the early Scots. His summary chapter, "On Gaelic Testi
mony as to Matriarchy and the Couvade" is offered as an "addition to
the Pictish Matriachate as set forth by Zimmer" (p. 301). "Couvade,"
deriyed from the French couver (to brood or hatch out, as hens), is
the term for a ritual or at least a situation in which all adult males
of a tribal group either suffer or appear to suffer the pangs of labor.
77
Couvade has its most elaborate illustration in the Ulster cycle's "De
b ility of the Ulstermen," where i t appears to be one of two, i f not
the crucial factor in the Tain epic. Henderson is w illing to allow
that there certainly is abundant evidence in Celtic legend for mother-
right: "Many of the great heroes . . . have their descent reckoned
on their mother's side, e.g. Cuchulinn . . . known as Cuchulinn m ac
Dechthere; so too Fergus Mac Rog, Diarmud o Duinn." Here Henderson
might have appended a small volume of Celtic males bearing mother-
surnames, beginning with the 'god' Lug in Invasions, whose fu ll nam e
is Lug m ac Ethenn after his mother Ethnui, daughter of the Formorian
king, and including most significantly the other two principals from
the Ulster cycle: Conchubar Mac Nessa, placed on the throne in Fergus'
stead by his warrior-mother Nessa, and A i l i l l , consort of Maeve, who
informs her„arrogantly (and unfortunately): "I came and assumed the
5
kingship here in virtue of m y mother's rights." In this very brief
lis tin g , we can see that claims of mother-right and mother-surnames
span the entire range of the Celtic cycles, from Lug in the most an
cient invasions to Finnls lieutenant Diarmuid in the late Fenian cycle:
moreover, the phenomenon was not limited to the northern area and
literatu re, but appears in annals of Connaught, Leinster--in fact every
area of Ireland.
Henderson makes two very important points in his summation—both
of them direct departures from Zimmer's Aryan party line. As to the
78
Couvade its e lf, . . i t seems to have originated in a kind of dodge
or social fiction whereby the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy
was fa cilita te d . To the father was attributed a kind of birth-debility,
in virtue of which he could make a good claim to personal possession in
his offspring." Furthermore, "W e cannot deduce that Ithe Couvade] was
never observed am ong the Gaels, s t ill less than Piets were not Celts"
(p. 302). The claim that matriarchies could and did evolve into pa
triarchies without the phenomenon of foreign invasion is a significant
opening wedge to a better understanding of the racial conscience. And
Henderson's rejection of the time-honored notion that each of Ireland's
successive 'invasion waves' was a different race of people is a great
step forward. The traditional idea that Fomorians, Nemedians, Dananns,
Milesians, etc. were 'foreign' to each other is clearly belied by the
texts, as the involved intermarriage of the genealogies attests. De
spite the various wars for supremacy and the various excursions to and
from Ireland, Gaul, Greece, Scythia, Spain, or wherever—clearly we
have a case of battling cousins who, to a great extent, shared com m on
beliefs, customs, and language. Given a Europe dominated by Celts from
Aran to Galacia, the concept, of 'foreign' invasions is analogous to
the concept that Australians, Englishmen, Canadians, and Americans
would be 'foreigners' to each other should they somehow come to s trife .
There is simply no reason to assume that any of the peoples in the
cycles were other than Celts, as Joyce was so nimbly to illu s tra te in
a single lin e --"S ir Tristram rearrives" (FW, p. 1).
In fact, Joyce was to expand this concept into a broader picture
of European homogeneity long before its ultimate poetic presentation in
Finnegans Wake. In "Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," he brings
the concept into the contemporary context:
Nationality ( i f i t really is not a convenient fiction
like so many others to which the scalpels of present-
day scientists have given the coup-de-grace) must find
its reason for being rooted in something that surpasses
and transcends and informs changing things like blood
and hum an word. The mystic theologian who assumed the
pseudonym of Dionysius, the pseudo-Areopagite, says
somewhere "God has disposed the limits of nations ac
cording to his angels," and this probably is not a
purely mystical concept. Do we not see that in Ireland
the Danes, the Firbolgs, the Milesians from Spain, and
the Anglo-Saxon settlers have united to form a new entity,
one might say under the influence of a local deity?
(CW, p. 166).
Presumably Joyce was influenced in his thinking by the example of his
own Norman forebears, who became so thoroughly assimilated into Celtic
lif e as to earn themselves the t it l e "more Irish than the Irish ." The
"local deity" in the above passage m ay be read simply as a kind of
Lawrentian "spirit of place;" but,.as this study hopes to demonstrate,
i t is possible that Joyce already had in mind a far more specific
meaning for the term.
Henderson's approach is the more cautious and subdued speculation
of a nineteenth-century scholar. He must admit, upon evidence in
"Bricriu's Feast," that within the text of the Ulster cycle, "a deep
difference was perceived by the Celts of the Gaelic territo ry of Meath
80,
between themselves and the Ultonians" Ji.e. Ulstermen]. In fact, a
"deep difference" was perceived not only by the Celts of Meath, but
by the Celts of Leinster, and most strenuously by the Celts of Con
naught. Indeed, many Celtic scholars have pondered as to why the pro
vince of Ulster, in the ancient literatu re, appears to be singularly
at odds with all of the other provinces: the Tain its e lf could be
justly likened to Mrs. Mervyn Tallboy's polo match in the 'Circe' epi
sode of Ulysses--"A11 Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland" (p. 467). I f
one were to enlarge a b it on Henderson's suggestion of homogeneity of
the Irish people, however, one might conclude that this perceived d if
ference is not a racial, but more nearly a theological one. I t is not
inconceivable to deduce from the evidence that Ulster was the f ir s t,
rather than the last, province to evolve from.a matriarchal into a
patriarchal society, and for that reason engendered the enmity of the
other provinces. I f we postulate that the rest of the provinces were
s t ill living under the old matriarchal belief-system and life -v is io n ,
then i t follows that the increasingly belligerent and aggressive a t t i
tudes of Ulster were an affront not only to their com m on customs, but
to their god.
Henderson made no such imaginative leap, however, and the Matri
archy controversy has continued its labyrinthine course to the present,
despite Thurneyson's refutation of 1929. One supposes that the recur
rence of matriarchal ruminations in the face of Thurneyson's consid- -
erable skill and reputation is due to the fact that Thurneyson's
_ _ . , _ n
study—a group effo rt which included Myles Dillon, Kathleen Mulchrone,
Daniel Binchy, and others--was 'defin itive' only to the participants
themselves. Their study of women's legal status under ancient law, the
Senchas Mor, often suffers, like Jubainville's work, from notable con
flic ts between text and interpretation. Although the Senchas Mor text
presents the ancient law as rewritten by the Medieval clergy to bring
i t into line with Christian doctrine, i t nonetheless offers abundant
evidence of sexual freedom, multiple husbands, separate inheritance,
and broad legal powers for Celtic females. In face of this evidence,
the Thurneyson group obdurately held the line for a 'proper' patri
archal society. The book bristles with defensive Aryan supremacy
reasoning; : nowhere more so than in Binchy's essay where, faced with
overwhelming evidence of women's rights, he resorts to the argument
that while the Celtic patriarchy was founded Tike all Aryan societies
on the Indo-European agnatic law ( i. e . , wom en had no tribal ties or
legal status whatever from the moment they married), the gentling in
fluence of Christianity brought about.a slight shift to cognatic law
(wherein a w om an retained a measure of identity with her own tribe
6
rather than simply being numbered am ong her husband's possessions).
This reversed Zimmer's order of things, yet i t seems even less plausi
ble that the Medieval Church would be a source for introducing cogna
tic , or matriarchal, law, especially that which recognizes promiscuity,
into the Senchas Mor. Like Zimmer, Thurneyson's group seems to have
82
com e to the wrong conclusions for the "right" reasons: the study
protects the Aryan reputation of the Celts by abjuring even the hint of
matriarchy—supporting patriarchal male supremacy even at the cost of
distorting and belying textural evidence to the contrary.
Ireland's current poet laureate, Thomas Kinsella, reviewed the
male/female controversy yet again in the introduction to his ow n trans
lation of the Ulster cycle's epic, The Tain:^
Heinrich Zimmer saw the pi How-talk which gives rise
to the Tain as a conflict between Celtic-Aryan father-
dominance and the mother-dominance of the pre-Celtic
inhabitants . . . Frank O'Connor suggested that the
earliest layer of the story . . . constitutes the re
mains of an ancient ironic antifeminist poem. T.F.
O'Rahilly believed that the Ulster stories described
. . . the invasion of Ulster, by Ui Neill invaders ■
from Leinster (not Connacht), the idea of Medb as
queen of Connacht . . . being a mistake on the part
of writers who were unaware that Irish tribes did
not have queens (p. x i i i ) .
While Kinsella eschews entering into the controversy, he is forced to
admit that, interpreted as a patriarchal hero-saga (as his translation
certainly does), the Tain fa ils to yield "the actual motive for the
Connacht invasion of Ulster," and he concludes:
Probably the greatest achievement of the Tain and
the Ulster cycle is the series of women, som e in fu ll
scale and come in miniature, on whose strong and diverse
personalities the action continually turns: Mebd, Der-
driu, Macha, Nes, Aife. I t may be as goddess-figures,
ultimately, that these w om en have their power; i t is
certainly they, under all the violence, who remain
the most real in memory (p. xv).
I f Kinsella had followed his instinct here, he might have deduced the
"actual motive" and given us a freely-rendered Tain: instead, he dons
83
the scholar's cloak, accepting the heroic tradition and apparently too
overcome with reverence to make radical alterations in i t . His Tain is
an elegant one, but he leaves the Ulster cycle m uch as he found it--an
enigmatic riddle of the racial conscience. And so i t seems doomed to
remain; a lovingly-burnished a rtifa c t in the "musey-roonn" But, then,
perhaps not: for in the midst of the matriarchy debate, from the end
of the nineteenth century to the year 1921, a young Irishman named
James Joyce, self-nominated poet of his race, was listening, absorbing,
and fin a lly forging a m agnum opus he gleefully labeled "Ulysses or your
bitch of a mother."^
"Ulysses or your bitch of a mother"—a broad joke at Penelope's
expense? Perhaps Ulysses was a broad joke at everyone's expense:
surely no rejoinder to the Hellenizing fever could be more devastating
than the Irish counterparts Joyce created. The very t it le symbolizes
a metempsychosis of the hero's nam e from its pristine Greek original
to a Rom an equivalent, and from that 'interpratatio Romana' onward,
Irish l if e , like Bloom's nymph, seems to take on the attributes of a
penny copy of a Rom an imitation of a Greek ideal. This, at least, was
the reaction of W . K. Magee (John Eglinton), whose comments may stand
symbol for a number of Joyce's critics:
. . . i t was after nearly as many years of absence
as Ulysses from the country "which belonged to him"
that Joyce turned up again for us in Dublin . . .
our Romano-Celtic Joyce . . . like a devil taking
pleasure in forcing a virgin to speak obscenely . . .
rejoiced in causing the language of Milton and Wordsworth
the utter all but unimaginable f ilt h and treason . . .
Such is Joyce's Celtic revenge.9
84
Magee's outburst, with its unconscious shift from Graeco- to Romano-
Celtic, probably delighted "Herr Satan."
But Joyce's Celtic revenge was (1 ike Mananaan's revenge in his
text) no revenge at a ll. Rather, i t was a sincere and ultimately b r il
lian t strategy for revitalizing and bequeathing the ancient heritage.
Readers of Ulysses have often commented on the Chaucerian quality of
Joyce's work--his penchant for the bawdy, lewd pun, the coarsely sexual.
But Joyce had no need of Chaucer as a model for this sort of license:
i t was the hallmark of his ow n literary heritage for at least six hun
dred years before Chaucer was born. I t is the s p irit of the old tra
dition, spurned by the Revival as unfortunate pagan crudeness, that
lives most v ita lly in the works of Joyce. Opposing the Literary Re
vival, who solemnized and elevated the ancient epics in works like
O n Baile's Strand and Dierdre, Joyce granted fu ll recognition to the
uniquely earthy, even 'obscene' realism of Irish saga as a significant
integral component of the ancient vision. By incorporating that compo
nent into his ow n art he did, indeed, make Ireland belong to him.
In one respect, Zimmer had been right: am ong ancient literatures
perhaps none-is so ribald, so blatant in its physicial literalness, so
preoccupied with sexuality, as is the Celtic. Urination, defecation,
menstruation, copulation, detailed description (even grotesque distor
tion) of the genitalia; a ll of these are not merely present in Irish
saga, but often become emblems, in m uch the same manner of the sheila-
na-gig carvings—those prehistoric pudenda votives the modern Irish
85
would prefer to forget. Thus urination very early becomes a symbol for
v ita lity and prevailing in The Book of Invasions, where the Danann
druids insure the Fomorians' defeat by uttering a chant which stops
their urine. N o levity is intended here, and the a b ility to urinate
becomes, as the cycles unfold, a symbolic intimation of the destiny of
various characters or causes. Yet levity is often a factor, producing
that wry blend of pity and sarcasm which remains a hallmark of Irish
writing to this day. In the Tain we see an old grandfather, galloping
befuddled into battle stark naked in the archaic Gaulish style,
throwing clods of d irt at an army,which has gathered round to howl
with laughter at "him in his nakedness, with his narrow tool and his
balls hanging down through the chariot f l o o r . I n terms of crudity,
one cannot recall a Classical or Biblical hero winning at single com
bat in this manner:: "then Cuehulainn ground and squeezed him between
his hands . . . crushed and shook him and forced all his excrement out
of him."1^ And one prototype of the many urination scenes in Ulysses
is surely the pointed scene in the Tain in which the champion Ferdiad,
coming to take leave of Maeve and Cruachan before his combat with Cu-
chulain, finds the queen "letting her water from her on the floor" of
her battle-tent. W e surely do not expect to see Helen or Penelope,
m uch less Athena herself, perform such acts in Greek epic. This stark
image of the queen/god is the quintessence of an earthiness and candor
uniquely Celtic, and Joyce did "rejoice" in it: he was to celebrate
this particular scene again in Finnegans W ake with naif Cruachan1. . . .
86
w om en w ill water the world over" (p. 526), an accolade to the preva
lence of the female principle. Magee may have been offended and an
gered when confronted with what he failed to recognize as his ow n
ethnic inheritance; Joyce was not. The s p irit of the ancient lite r a
ture, and most specifically its pervading bodily frankness and sexual
preoccupations were not only acceptable to Joyce, but were apprehended
by him as the manifestation of that "uniquely Celtic insight"—the
crucial differentness of his heritage.
The significance of the Celtic dimension of Joyce's 'Homeric' work
lies in differentiating the entire heritage represented by the Celtic
and Greek poet. Between Stephen's vague setting-forth to forge the
uncreated conscience of the race and Joyce's mature creation of
Ulysses, Joyce had learned a great deal. The original concept of
Curtin— to use an intact be!ief-system of one race to reconstruct the
partially destroyed be!ief-system of another—had undergone a sea-
change in Joyce's mind through his growing acquaintance with the con
cepts of Giordano Bruno. Rather than the reductive method of identi
fying correspondences, would i t not be more profitable to isolate and
then reconcile opposites? Clearly none of the many attempts to corre
late correspondences had yielded anything like a whole be!ief-system.
With Bruno's concepts as guiding principles* however—by accentuating
the contrasts rather than the sim ilarities—one could, perhaps, restore
the fragments to their proper order of significance. Bruno's Neo-Pla
tonic concern was the reconciliation of form and matter: for an a rtis t
87
like Joyce, a fir s t application of such principles would naturally be
the relationship between form and content in lite ra tu re . Form and
content, style and meaning--these are obviously inseparable in the
mind of Joyce (as, indeed, they are in the minds of all great a rtis ts ).
What to make then of a literature whose style, whose manner of execu
tion, is totally at odds with that of Greek epic, Hebrew scripture, or
Teutonic saga? I f the unabashed physical candor, the 1vulgivaga’
casualness of the manner is an accurate reflection of the matter i t was
designed to convey, then the content, like the style which conveys i t ,
must also be at odds with the content of the other literatures. A s
they are all demonstrably patriarchal literatures, the most plausible
conclusion is that the Celtic literature is matriarchal. For Joyce,
the true uniqueness of the Celtic heritage lay in the assumption that
the surface i_ s _ symbol: that its literature reflects the life-vision
of an ancient matriarchal conscience, and for that reason displays a
style and attitude which is contradictory and/or complementary to that
of Homeric epic, Hebrew scripture, or, in fact, most of Western c iv i
lization. Bruno's philosophy was directed to the larger issue of
reconciling the form and matter of the universe its e lf, but that re
conciliation, after a ll, has frequently been expressed in an apposition
of the female and male principles of that universe.
Of the much-touted Homeric schema for Ulysses Magee commented
deprecatingly, " . . . a key to the elaborate symbolism of the
88
different episodes, all pointing to a central mystery, undivulged, I
fancy." Magee fancied rightly. Having planted so many flags about the
landscape of his design, Joyce had no intention of declaring his mean
ing overtly, preferring as usual to force the layman to think. But
the nonchalance with which he rearranged the episodes of the Odyssey,
the apparent contradictions between the resolution of Homer's epic and
the outcome of Joyce's novel, cannot be reconciled unless we understand
that Ulysses is not simply a modern epic (mock or'otherwise) reliant
for structural unity on an ancient Greek model. Ulysses is more ac
curately a symphonic composition based on a contrapuntal arrangement of
two major Western litera ry traditions, the Greek and the Celtic.
Homer's Odyssey provides only one part of the symbolic meaning of
Ulysses: Celtic mythology—particularly the Ulster cycle—provides the
symbolic counterpart. The contrapuntal integration of Homeric and Cel
tic epic is crucial to the meaning of Ulysses, and even more crucial,
perhaps, to Joyce's personal sense of poetic mission in the European
world at large. The anthropological ramifications of Joyce's inter
pretation of his heritage—of an attempt to reunite Western matriarchy
with Western patriarchy--are prodigious. In terms of metaphysical
wholeness, psychological balance, cultural fru itio n , or a philosophic
revision of the sterile Judeo-Christian Trinity, the possibilities
suggested by Joyce's interpretation range far beyond the scope of the
present study. Indeed, simply identifying and explicating the mythic
m
structures and symbols derived from Celtic sources is at times so in
tricate a task that the only possible general comment is Joyce's ow n
tongue-in-cheek "your head i t simply swirls."
But Joyce's own head did not swirl. As he remarked very early in
his career, his Jesuit education had taught him ". . . to arrange
12
things in such a way that they become easy to survey and judge."
Ulysses attempts to do just that—to arrange the relatively unfamiliar
Celtic symbols over against the fam iliar Greek (and to a lesser extent
Hebraic and Teutonic) archetypes so that the true nature of the Celtic
conscience can be at last surveyed and judged. Thus the images, sym
bols, and emblems of the Ulster cycle—horses, horse-racing, birds,
bulls—com e into the text of Ulysses freighted with ancient power:
Joyce reestablishes their logical interdependence, releases that power,
by manipulating them into juxtaposition with the more fam iliar Greek
counterparts. This is no simple performance, no allegorical package
of neat one-for-one correspondences: the effect is more often parallax
than parallel, as every reader of Ulysses has already discovered to his
discomfort. To reconnect the Celtic symbols into a coherent system
requires imagination, a willingness to abjure from casting any hero-
light over them, and above all a readiness to rearrange the fragmented
episodes so that the symbolic development becomes "nebeneinder" rather
than "nacheinander" when fused with the symbolic patterns of the
European all-mind or unconscious.
90
Standing alone, as a traditional patriarchal hero-saga, the Ulster
cycle offers an object lesson in the distorting power of the 1 uncrea
tion. 1 I t is a shattered testimony which, in its present state (as
Kinsella has pointed out), fa ils to express the cause of the epic war
which forms its core. Yet the Ulster cycle was demonstrably of intense
importance to the ancients, as its opening episode, "How the Tain B o
13
Cuailnge was Found Again" illustrates. This fir s t of the pro-tales
relates how the poets of Ireland had become incapable of reciting the
epic, and how, in their search for someone to restore the correct t e l
ling of the greatest epic to them, one poet manages to bring back the
s p irit of Fergus himself—a central participant in the saga—who re
cites the entire epic and gives instructions for the pro-tales which
must be recited before the epic war its e lf may be told. Here we have
a glimpse into the ancient attitudes of poets in an oral tradition; an
example of Jubainville's observation on the importance of veracity, an
illustration of the fe lt responsibility for authenticity and correct
reproduction. It is also an illustration of what time and the overlay
of new modes of belief can do to an ancient tradition. The fir s t tale
includes instructions that seven other pro-tales must be recited before
the war or cattle-raid can be chanted. In Kinsella's text they are:
How Conchobar was Begotten, and how he took the Kingship
of Ulster
The Pangs of Ulster [ i. e . , the Debility of the Ulstermen]
Exile^of the Sons of Uisliu [ i . e . , the Dierdre legend]
How Cuchulainn was Begotten
Cdchulainn's Courtship of Emer . . .
91
The Death of A ife ’s One Son
The Quarrel of the Two Pig-keepers and how the
Bulls were begotten
Other versions of the cycle d iffe r slightly in the naming of the pro
tales, but there is clearly thematic and symbolic continuity am ong the
pro-tales and the central epic its e lf--a s there is continuity to a
certain extent among som e of the after-tales (basically recitals of
how each of the Ulster heroes met his death). What is lacking is logi
cal sequencing. "The Pangs" or "Debility" ta le , for instance, occurs
presumably in som e dim time very ancient even to the reign of Conchubar;
again, the birthtales of the three principal fathers/sons—Conchubar,
Cuchulain, and Conn!a, are not grouped so that we may see their symbo
lic connection. The pro-tales, as well as the Tain or central cattle-
raid its e lf were, unfortunately, transcribed by Medieval monks who were
so far removed from the original ambience of the epic that they no
longer recognized such discrepancies. While time and space do not
permit a fu ll discussion of all facets of this massive cycle, i t is
fa ir to say that the Ulster cycle, viewed as a hero-saga, offers an
extraordinarily negative vision of Ulster's heroes. Contrary to Yeats'
"cloud of stalwart witnesses," the cycle presents us with a defiant and
isolated Ulster laid under a terrib le and debilitating curse. Ulster's
King Conchubar appears treacherous and, in his treatment of Dierdre,
debased: he usurps the throne, brings dishonor to the rightful King
Fergus, and drives him into the camp of Maeve—where Fergus truly
92
dishonors himself. I t presents us with a central hero whose ferocity
is so ungovernable that he k ills his noble foster-brother and his ow n
son, and both by dishonorable means. What are we to make of an epic
hero whose nam e is "dog"1 , of the cruel king who uses him in precisely
that capacity, of the inordinate rage of Maeve of Cruachan over an
apparent tr iv ia lity , of a victory won ( i f that term can be applied at
a ll) not by valor but through betrayal, or the anti-climactic mutual
destruction of the two bulls for whom the war was waged? Whoever sang
of arms and the m an here sang s a tiric a lly , i t would seem--but i t is the
deadly earnest satire of a Swift. As this study proceeds, each of the
major characters of the cycle w ill be discussed in relation to Joyce's
allusions to them in Ulysses: in general, Joyce's achievement in
Ulysses was to release the symbolic patterns of the Ulster cycle from
the preconceived standards of Christian, German, and Revival redactors,
allowing the archetypal relationships to coalesce into what is simulta
neously a new and a very old order of meaning. Reduced to the simplest
of paradigms they divide themselves thus: women, horses, and birds
against men, dogs, and bulls—the emblems of matriarchy against the
emblems of patriarchy.
Not possessing the genius of a Joyce, one must resort humbly for
the moment to the nacheinander mode: i f the Ulster cycle, The Book of
the Dun Cow, is Stephen's religious lite ra tu re , then, to rearrange i t
as the s p irit of matriarchy would bequeath i t , the 'Genesis' of this
93
Irish bible would be "The Debility of the Ulstermen." This pro-tale
explains why Ulster alone came to be cursed, and i t is upon the nature
of that curse that the meaning of later action depends. While not a
creation myth, the tale is definitely the Irish version of the Fall of
Man.
In the ta le , Macha, or god, comes to the lonely widower on the
h ill, Crunnchu mac Agnoman. Silently and unbidden, the beautiful w om an
takes com m and of his household, and at the end of the fir s t magical day
she disrobes, lays her hand on him to signify that he is chosen, and
mates with him. Macha's sole motive for coming to m an in this way
is that "his beautiful appearance delighted her." This union brings
perfect happiness and prosperity—but one condition is laid on the m an
by Macha: he must never speak boastfully or possessively of her in the
assembly or Ulster. At the very next assembly the hapless m an becomes
drunk, boasts loudly that his wife could outrun the king's horses in
the race about to take place. Macha, though pregnant, is dragged to
the assembly to make good her husband's boast. Though she pleads to
the crowd, "help me, for a mother hath born each one of you," she re
ceives no mercy at the hands of the roistering Ulstermen, who threaten
to hack the husband to pieces unless she complies. Macha then orders
the horses brought up, and turning to curse the merciless Ulstermen,
reveals her true identity: "m y name, and the name of that which I
shall bear, w ill forever cleave to the place of this assembly. I am
94
Macha, daughter of the Strange Son of Ocean . . . from this hour the
ignominy that you have inflicted upon m e will redound to the shame of
each one of you."^4 She then runs and wins the race, giving birth at
the end of the race-course to twins (from which event the capital of
Ulster, Emain Macha--"twins of Macha"—takes its name). At Macha's
birth-cry,a dreadful weakness overcomes the assembled Ulstermen: the
effect of Macha's curse is that, henceforth, when attacked, all Ulster
m en w ill suffer labor-pains and thus be incapable of defending their
homeland—a curious inversion of the Biblical expulsion from Eden.
Moreover, the curse redounds unto the ninth generation, or nine hundred
years (depending upon which translation one reads), which explains why
Cuchulain (who was born outside of Ulster) is its sole defender against
Maeve's hosts in the later Tain epic. The legend of Macha's curse,
then, is as crucial for understanding what follows in the Ulster cy
cle's be!ief-system as the expulsion from Eden is to understanding
of the Judeo-Christian system.
This is the Couvade which featured so prominently in the specu
lations of Zimmer, Henderson, and others. But to read this tale solely
from the anthropologist's or historian's point of view is to deflate
its symbolic power and rob i t of its deep poetic resonance—rather like
Freud's dissection of Communion as mere vestigial trances of father-
devouring in Moses and Monotheism. Neither Keating's quasi-historical
treatment of Macha as an actual personage, nor later speculation that
95
Ulster's tribal 'pangs' were a voluntary "social fiction" played out
to satisfy fine points of cognatic and/or agnatic law serves to render
an adequate 'meaning' for this tale. The Couvade is dramatically pre
sented as a curse, and to explain i t away in historical fashion is to
undercut the poet's province--to divest the heritage of its deliberate
intensity and mystery. Certainly James Joyce would be the least likely
of all writers to allow a usurpation of his inherited mysteries, and
he intended to rule the province alone: that intention is clear in
his retort to Augusta Gregory, "Now I w ill make m y own legend and stick
to i t . " 15
Joyce's propensity for mystery and mystifying is amply confirmed
in that sam e reaction from Magee with which this discussion began.
Magee's dismissal of the "central mystery" of Joyce's book is typical
of many c ritic s ' conclusions: "Ulysses is, in fact, a mock-heroic and
at the heart of i t is . . . an awful inner void." Yet Magee had som e
second thoughts: "But is there no serious intention in Ulysses? . . .
Near the center of the book in that chapter known as 'Oxen of the
Sun' . . . there is a passage over which the reader may pause" (p. 205)
The passage certainly does give pause:
There are sins or (le t us call them as the world calls
them) evil memories which are hidden away by m an in the
darkest places of the heart but they abide there and
wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them
be as though they had not been and all but persuade him
self that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet
a chance word w ill call them forth and they w ill rise up
to confront him . . . Not to insult over him w ill the
96
vision com e as over one that lies under her wrath,
not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but
shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent,
remote, reproachful (U ^, p. 421).
Magee sensed in 'Oxen' that central mystery in Joyce's work; he sensed
a "relaxation . . . of mockery" and that is a ll. He failed to note the
gender of the vision, and that is much. Ostensibly, one may surmise
that the passage is yet one more allusion to Stephen's mother-gui1t.
But the solemnity of tone, and the significant generalization of "evil
memories" ("Man" in the universal is invoked here) cause us, like
Magee, to take special pause in the midst of what is otherwise an in
creasingly celebrational movement following Mina Purefoy's delivery.
This passage seems to transcend the localized events of the episode--or
even the immediate past of May Gaul ding's death. The vision is indeed
"remote," the entire passage seeming to move suddenly only a vast scale
of time beyond that of the episode as a whole. In this ". . . most
1 fi
d iffic u lt episode . . . both to interpret and to execute," Joyce
chose to introduce one of his most important Celtic interpretations.
I t probably afforded him a silent satisfaction that none of his Irish
critics could recognize, buried in his "Romano-Celtic" epic, the cen
tral mystery of their own heritage—much less realize that by applying
Bruno's strategy they might possess once more their ancient heritage in
the fullness of its meaning. In the general rush to denounce what they
mistakenly assumed to be the Ibsenesque "realism" of the novel's sur
face, they overlooked the possibility that the surface its e lf could be
emblematic of an ancient way of seeing. The fox buried his grandmother
________________________________________________________________
97
quite cunningly—but here Joyce brings her very close to the surface:
the notable shift in tone and perspective suggest quite strongly that
this spectre is much more than Stephen's mother, or even all mortal
mothers—with her remoteness and power to cut m en off from the living
she suggests most strongly the ancient god of the Celts, w hom time and
m en have made "otherwise." As Magee intuited, Joyce's intentions were
as serious as they were 'mysterious.'
That the story of Macha was the Irish 'Fall of Man' in Joyce's
mind is clear from the fact that he placed i t where he did— in the
crucial 'Oxen of the Sun' episode which is its e lf the Genesis or w om b
chapter of the novel. In this most d iffic u lt of episodes, so very m uch
is transpiring simultaneously: the gestation of English prose style,
the germination of Bloom's and Stephen's relationship, and the enact
ment of that other famous desecration, the destruction of Helios' Oxen
by Odysseus' sailors—but why does Joyce deliberately set his blasphemy
episode in the lying-in hospital? Would not the c a ttle -k illin g episode
of Homer be better set in, say, Cuffe's livestock yard? I t might i f
Joyce were merely writing an Irish parallel to Homer. But only the
House of Horne can provide the proper setting for the contrapuntal
Celtic blasphemy; for amidst all else, the central event is Mina
Purefoy's labor and bringing-forth. The dull-thudding hooves Joyce
chose as the aural device for this chapter synthesizes the Greek and
Irish traditions b rillia n tly : they are at once the hooves of Helios'
oxen and the hooves of the racing horses at Emain Macha.
98
To be sure, the episode contains mention of the proposed de
struction of Irish cattle to prevent the spread of hoof-and-mouth:dis-
ease: Lenehan te lls Stephen that Deasy's le tte r has been printed,
Bloom asks anxiously "will they slaughter all?" and Stephen rejoins
with the quite hopeless prospect of someone coming from Europe with a
cure. S t ill, the talk of cattle-destruction and cattle generally is
couched in ambiguous terms which point more strongly to the Cattle
Raid of Cooley—the Tain which is the ultimate result of Macha's
curse—than to the oxen of Homeric epic. Lenehan, fir s t to bring up
the subject, is described thus: "what belonged to women, horseflesh,
or hot scandal he had i t pat." The cattle conversation evolves into
the remark "he'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma i f he meddles
with a bull that's Irish"—an allusion more aptly suited to Maeve's
husband Ail i l l , or even Cuchulain himself, than to any Homeric counter
part. The talk moves from Papal bulls, by which the Norman Henrys
fir s t laid claim to Ireland, into Tudor Henry's assimilation of the
Dun Cow as a portion of his ow n heraldic device—with serio-comic nar
ration of Henry V I I I ' s struggle to ju s tify this emblematic garb through
study of the documents concerning it: clearly Tudor Henry had no
easier time with the language of the Dun Cow than any other outlander.
But oxen-slaughter, cattle-raiding, or Papal bulls aside, the
main thrust of this chapter is not desecration of c attle, but desecra-
i
tion of the female.^ In 'Oxen' we see the drunken medicals re-enact the
99
sin of the Ulstermen—utter disrespect for the wom an in labor and
mockery of w om en in general. Only two males present abstain from this
sort of 'original sin' —Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, both of w hom
find i t distasteful. Bloom com m unes with himself on "the wonderful
metempsychosis possessed by them, and that the peurpural dormitory and
the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such friv o lity ,"
(p. 408) encapsulating with Joycean concision the elements of the o ri
ginal scene—the birthing, the threatened hacking apart, and the re
ligious connection. Stephen comes perilously close to joining the 'Ul
stermen1 in his mockery of the Virgin Birth doctrine, but his words dis
play even more levels of ambiguity than Bloom's suggestive identifica
tion of "The Debility:" "In woman's w om b word was made flesh but in
the s p irit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that
shall not pass away. This is the postcreation . . .n o question but
v
her name is puissant . . . ou^ mighty mother and mother most venera
ble" (p. 391). Beneath the mockery, buried in the language its e lf,
is a suggestive description of a female deity who, mated with a 'vates'
i f we w ill, brings forth the immortal word. I t strongly suggests Danu,
consubstantial mother of Knowledge, Art, and Poetry, and her later
metamorphosis Macha—mate and mother of ollamhs, Druidical poet-kings.
In this Celtic context, the 'postcreation' could be, of course, the
very text we are reading—rising out of the uncreation of the racial
conscience. Stephen's move toward joining the blasphemers is met in
stantly with "A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled,
100
back." "Back" is not a response (notethe placement of commas), i t is
a command; at which young Boasthard most certainly retreats. Whether
i t be Teutonic Thor or not, clearly som e force in the universe is deep
ly angered by what is transpiring in Holies Street—though how far
back i t intends Stephen to go is le ft unstated. I t merely leaves
Stephen cowering beside Bloom the Calmer, incapable of being comforted.
O n its Celtic level, loss of the god Bringforth, in terms of fecunda
ting the Word, is for the poet Stephen a fate too terrifying for com
fo rt. Such loss cuts off the poet, and the race, from its immortality
which is the word: i t is poetic and racial death. "And would he not
accept to die like the rest and pass away?" conjures up Jubainvilie's
image of the stoic dying Gaul. The answer is equally immediate— "By
no means would he."
The obvious agger of 'Bringforth' does not deter the other rois
terers, however, and as this metempsychosis of the original sin of
Ulster goes on, Joyce deftly juxtaposes blasphemy against wom an with
horse-racing and the larger issue of a racial Fall. From the point
where we find "T. Lenehan, very sad for a racinghorse he fancied,"
contempt for females, contraception, the Christian, Norman, and English
subjugation of mother Ireland, and the swaggering phallic posturing
of the entire assembly focuses down to lite ra l and symbolic contempt
for w om an as 1ife-bringer. Pregnancy, labor, and birth are sources
for smirking disgust and abuse—a consummation sacriligiously to be
101
avoided—until Punch Costello goes one step too fa r, even for the
medical Dixon. As nurse Call an steps in to te ll Dixon the birth is
imminent, Costello chooses to calumniate her, and Dixon rises to rebuke
the entire revelry. This marks a turning point in the chapter, and the
terms of Dixon's rebuke could not be more prophetic:
I want to patience . . . with those who revile an
ennobling profession which, saving the reverence
due to the Diety, is the greatest power for happi
ness on earth . . . What? Malign such a one . . .
at the instant the most momentous that can befall a
puny child of clay? . . . I shudder to think of the
future of a race where the seeds of such malice have
been sown and where no right reverence is rendered
to mother and maid in house of Horne" (p. 407).
Dixon has succinctly rendered the fate of Ulster, and, in Joyce's la r
ger imagination, the fate of Ireland.
Bloom also undergoes a change: up to this moment he has endured
the cynicism and blasphemy of the group with a mild "boys w ill be
boys" acceptance. Costello's remarks rouse Bloom from his benignity—
something which will happen only three times in the novel: in 'Cy
clops', in 'C irce', and here in 'Oxen'. "The word of Mr. Costello was
an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed
to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity borne out of wed
lock . . ." I t is very rare for gentle Bloom to lose his temper, and
though Joyce is having great fun with the diction here, Bloom's anger
is of serious import in the symbolic structure: "he had enjoined his
heart to repress all motions of a rising cholar," but "To those who
create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy . . . to them
102
he would concede neither to bear the nam e nor to inherit the tradition
to a proper breeding" lemphasis mine]. Bloom, who has pity on all
creatures, human and otherwise, abominates Costello, partly because on
his hum an level he is worried about M illie and tormented over Molly.
O n the Celtic mythic leyel, however, Mr. Bloom is something quite
other, and this sudden uncharacteristic flash of anger at the humilia
tion of a w om an foreshadows his emergence in Ulysses as Mananaan him
self. In 'Oxen1, Bloom's identification with Mananaan, and Mananaan's
relationship to the Ulster cycle are carefully controlled periphera.
The sterility/contraception jokes told out in 'waterproof' emblems,
Stephen's ignorance of the land of promise and his unwitting remark
"greater love . . . no m an hath that a m an lay down his wife for his ,
friend"—even Haines' sudden cuckoo-clock apparition with a vial of
poison and the cry "The vendetta of Mananaan," are merely seeds Joyce
is planting for the later emergence of the benign sea-god, Strange
Son of Ocean—father of Macha. But 'Oxen of the sun' is Macha's ow n
chapter: the Mananaan aspeet of Bloom attends here nearly as in
visibly as the Invisible One himself*
Upon the birth of Mina Purefoy's child, the revelry at Horne's
house takes a new direction, switching from ribaldry to medical-sci
entific degradation of the mystery of birth and motherhood. Joyce
punctuates this discourse with a horde of allusions to ancient and
contemporary 'uncreators' of Celtic belief. While Bloom vainly urges
103
restraint, fragments from the uncreation fly thick and fast: f r a t r i
cides and primogeniture struggles are predictably prominent, while
"king's bounty touching twins and triplets" takes an ironic double
meaning in context of the abuse of Macha and her twins and the inex
orable overthrow of Danu and her trip le ts . Infanticide recalls the
old slur on the queen-god Rhiannon; the "agnatia" references echo the
agnatic versus cognatic legal arguments of most of the 'Aryan' scholar
ship; "delinquent rape" crowded onto "recorded instances of multi -
geminal, twikindled, and monstrous births" telescopes the whole range
of uncreators from Cambrensis through Keating's hapless retelling of
the rape of Clothfinn by her trip le t brothers the Finnemhna, arriving
fin a lly at the authority of Aristotle himself, which even Bloom ac
cepts. Pages 410 through 411 of the 'Oxen' episode present, fin a lly ,
an extremely deft panorama of uncreation, Celtic style. The "Caledo
nian envoy" (the very nam e recalls Diodorus Siculus' diatribe against
Caledonian indecency), fittin g representative of the "metaphysical tra
ditions of the land he stood for," argues the case for non-human in
fants, which leads into a broad burlesque of Cambrensis* rehashed
"theory of copulation between wom en and the males of brutes" complete
with an appeal to Classical authority as to the lite ra l engendering of
the Minotaur on Pasiphae. As the talk grows wilder and Mulligan con
jures Haines and his cry "The vendetta of Mananaan," Bloom disengages
from this Celtic sacrilege merry-go-round and sinks into a strange
104
revery on fatherhood and son-1ess-ness—which brings "Oxen of the Sun"
to its crucial moment.
Bloom's vision of the lost Rudy at the end of 'Circe' has received
m uch c ritic a l attention': far less effort has been expended on the
beatified vision of M illy in 'Oxen in the Sun.' This is unfortunate,
for of the two, i t is the mysterious apparition of the daughter and
mother which is the more significant in Joyce's novel. Out of the
whirligig of blasphemy, Bloom withdraws into a vision of an ancient
Celtic holy of holies" . . . on wide sagegreen pasturefields . . .
She follows her mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her f i l l y -
foal. Twilight phantoms are they yet moulded in prophetic grace of
structure, slim shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek
apprehensive skull. They fade, sad phantoms: a ll is gone. Agendath
is a wasteland" (p. 414). The phantom mares are displaced by all the
violent beasts, mythical and actual, who are identified as "murderers
of the sun:" here referring to a ll the sinners against Helios in
Homer's patriarchal epic, and, in Bloom's ow n patriarchally-conditioned
mind, to the males who now stand between himself and the begetting of
a son on his own. But miraculously, out of this violence and despair,
there arises not the wrath of Helios or the revenge of Poseidon, but a
re-emergence of the gentle s p irit of the mare: "the equine portent
grows again . . . to the heavens' own magnitude . . . i t is she, the
everlasting bride . . . i t is she . . . Mi H i cent . . . H ow serene does
105:
she now arise." In this passage, confused as the language is with the
canvasser Bloom's all-too-human associations (the opera Hartha, the
metempsychosis talk with Molly, his ow n guilts and patriarchal biases,
the somewhat whacky diction of George Russell), Joyce nevertheless a l
lows us a glimpse of the original god. One of Joyce's most discom-
fittin g tra its is to couch his serious revelations in this serio-comic
way; to move by indirection, protecting himself with the "indurating
shield" of a comic mask. Nonetheless, as Magee sensed, there is a
mystery here before us. I t is for the reader to allow i t to epipha-
nize. W e note the insistent repetition of " it is she," " it is she,"
"she," responding across more than half of the novel to Stephen's mourn
ful cry on page 48— "She, she, she. What she?" And equally, mysteri
ously, Bloom's vision is transmuted to the mind of Stephen, who, one
page la te r, observing Bloom's trance with Mulligan ("preserve a Druid
silence") says of i t "The lords of the m oon . . . were therefore in-r
carnated by the ruby-colored egos from the second constellation."
Across the space of these pages, Bloom's vision has unaccountably been
metempsychosed into the young poet's thought—they are seeing as one,
though they speak in different dictions. Though Stephen is deliberate
ly parodying the Theosophist style, i t is noteworthy that both he and
Bloom have fixed on "ruby-colored," the traditional Celtic emblem for
beings from the 'other world' of the ancient gods. And while Stephen's
version offers only the abstract suggestion of a primal genetrix
106
linked to the Celtic magical color, Bloom's vision is richer and more
specific. L ittle M illy.the f i l l y has, in Bloom's mind, "after myriad
metamorphoses of symbol," fixed her ruby-colored sign Alpha on the
forehead of Taurus. Alpha— ' f i r s t ' —allows a strong suggestion that
she is fir s t principle; as the Judeo-Christian system uses "Alpha and
Omega" to indicate that Christ is f ir s t and last principle. (W e need
not consider the "Omega" half of the equation, perhaps, until we arrive
at Penelope). But more importantly, Bloom's vision brings the female
equine symbol into conjunction with the bull: she marks him with her
sign. The female's gesture of marking the bull'as hers draws us di
rectly into Celtic mythology where, as this study hopes to trace, after
lite ra l "myriad metamorphoses of symbol" Maeve who was Macha who was
Epona who was Danu w ill claim her right to the great bull of Cooley in
The Book of the Dun Cow. In this 'Genesis' chapter, however, Joyce is
careful not to rush too quickly beyond the Ulster cycle's 'Geniesis.'
While bulls and the battle for the bull on the Tain are a natural
counterpoint for Homer's dull-thudding oxen, i t is the theme of sacri
lege that is uppermost here, and the emphasis on Macha and the original
sin of "The Debility" is kept in the foreground.
Intervening between Bloom's Druidical trance and Stephen's re
ception of its contents is a fa irly straightforward (for Joyce)meta
phoric linking of the Macha legend to the 'Oxen* episode: a discussion
of Stephen's role as national poet and a description of the Gold Cup
107
race. Stephen’ s role is fir s t discussed in terms of bringing the.dead
back to lif e , then in terms of impregnation and gestation— "All desire
to see you bring forth the work you meditate"—and the talk is t e r - /
minated by Lenehan " . . . have no fear. He could not leave his mother
an orphan." The mention of the mother so agitates Stephen that he near
ly leaves, but he is distracted by the horse-race talk. "Madden had
lost five drachmas on Sceptre . . . Lenehan had lost as much more . . .
the mare ran out freshly . . . she was leading the fie ld : all hearts
were beating . . . But . . . the dark horse Throwaway drew level, .
reached, outstripped her. All was lost now." (A variant on Bloom's
equine vision "all is gone.") To reinforce the matriarchal/patriarchal
symbolism Joyce has the character Phyllis cry out "Juno . . . I am un
done." W e find that the reason Throwaway has edged Sceptre: "A whack
ing fine whip . . . . is W . Lane." Use of the whip, on the Celtic level
of reading, constitutes yet another breaking of the ancient laws—i t
was forbidden at the great assemblies, Ulster, Tara, or anywhere, to
whip or abuse a horse in any way during the ritual games. There is a
fine edge of irony on Lenhehan's summation: "But le t us bear i t as was
the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! . . . She is
not the f i l l y she was. Never . . . shall we behold such another. By
gad, s ir, a queen of them" (p. 415).
The nam e of the mare, Sceptre, allows Joyce to link her directly
to Macha ("I am the sovereignty.") But linking Sceptre to Macha, and
108
"The Debility of the Ulstermen" to sacrilege s t ill leaves us a long way
from perceiving a whole system of belief. I f original sin was dis
respect for the female principle, then who was this god, what were her
commandments, and how was she worshipped? Patrick Ford, in his superb
ly concise introduction to The Mabinogi J 7 supplies ; some, rich clues ; = -
in his own search to discover the underlying principle of the Welsh cy
cles. Noting the fragmented recurrence in Welsh cycles of Cyfrnac Casec
a 'r Mab— "The Adventure of the Mare and the Boy",—Ford finds the recur
rent pattern "had its origins in a myth concerning a horse-goddess and
f e r t ilit y deity" (p. 4). This god is the Gaulish Epona., whose worship
on the continent was extremely widespread. So ubiquitous was Epona-wor-
ship that, as Ford points out, she was worshipped even in Rome, and
was a special favorite with the Rom an cavalry, who nicknamed her "re-
gina." Ford te lls us "The Rom ans celebrated her feast on December 18,
between the Consualia (December 15) and the Opalia (December 19) . . .
Consus himself was indentified with the Poseidon Hippios. The impor
tant point here is that Epona was associated . . . with the hippomor-
phic sea god. . ." (p. 5). The Ware-god was clearly not a mere local
or incidental deity. Both continental and insular Celtic warriors of
18
ancient times dressed their hair to resemble the mane of a horse,
and this may also have been-the basis of the Druidical tonsure which
brought the Irish church into such notable conflict with the Italian in
the Middle Ages, a conflict which eventually forced the Irish clergy to
109
adopt the Italian tonsure and the Italian practice of clerical celibacy
in the twelfth century. As late as fifteenth century, Pope Calixtus II
prohibited religious ceremonies in the "cave with the horse pic-
19
tures," while even in our ow n day, Carl Jung records, . . c h il
dren all over Britian (and elsewhere) believe i t is lucky to see a
white horse—which is a well-known symbol of lif e . A Celtic goddess of
20
creativity, Epona............. was often personified as a white mare." The
Mare-god is often depicted directly in her hippomorphic aspect, sur
rounded with foals, sometimes in two of her aspects, a wom an riding a
horse and carrying a cornucopia, and sometimes in all three of her as
pects, a wom an on a horse accompanied by birds. I t would seem, from
the link with the sea-god, and the hippomorphic associations, that
Irish Macha and Gaulish Epona are but two names for one deity. Patrick
Ford adds further evidence of the Mare-god's importance from the Welsh
cycles: the heroine of the fir s t branch of The Mabinogi, Rhiannon
("great queen-goddess") appears in the Cyfranc Caseg a 'r Mab riding a
pale-white horse. Her punishment and humiliation, which we have alrea
dy discussed in regard to 'Cambrensis1 garbled version of i t , befell
her because she was believed either to have killed her child or to
have borne a foal. In the tale, both the infant and the foal were
eventually found, the child restored to the queen, the foal given to
the child. Ford finds the hippomorphic aspect of the 'great queen-
goddess' mirrored in "The Debility of the Ulstermen," while Macha's
110.
equine associations are further developed in "The Birth of Cuchulain,"
another of the pro-tales of the Tain in the Ulster cycle. From the
several versions of Cuchulain's birth, Ford chooses that in which
King Conchubar, setting out to hunt birds, takes shelter at nightfall
with a m an and his pregnant wife. Conchubar claims his right (that
same Hebridean king's right described by Zimmer) to sleep with the !
man's wife. During the night, a boy is born, while simultaneously out
side the door a mare gives birth to twin foals. At dawn, the infant
who w ill grow up to be Cuchulain is found in the king's cloak--while
all else, save the twin foals, has disappeared. In this version, as
Ford interprets it :
The boy is given to the king's sister to raise and
she declares that he will be treated exactly like
her son . . . the congenital horses turn out to
be exceptional, but one is greater than the other
. . . 'The Grey of Macha.' W hen Cuchulain is fin a lly
kille d , the Grey of Macha returns to the water, whence,
presumably, i t came. There is an obvious twinning
element here,,for the text implies that Conall and
Cuchulain are twins . . . Conall is victorious over
mortal opponents, whereas Cuchulain establishes his
superiority over the supernatural as well. Similarly,
while the one horse exceeds ordinary horses in beauty,
speed, and the lik e , the Grey of Macha is supernatural.
(p. 8)
The twinning element is a source of confusion in these stories, as is
the gender aspect of the twins. Macha's twins in "Debility" are a boy
and a g irl: we do not ever discover what becomes of them, and perhaps
the real significance of her twins are as archetypal representation of
the two sides of hum an psychic development, or the two balanced
Ill-
principles of the universe. The Grey of Macha is not a mare--although
the "he" designation in ancient texts may be due to years of scribal
error or to the ascension of a patriarchal point of view in which a
warrior's battTesteed could no longer be imagined as "she."' The as
cendent patriarchal bias is underscored in Joyce's novel through \
Bloom's attitude. He has produced a child of each gender, but seems
more often preoccupied with the loss of the male than with the survival
of the female—except of course in the finely ironic and beautiful v i
sion of "Oxen of the Sun.' Joyce would not turn fu ll attention to the
twins (and their mysterious sister) until Finnegans Wake. In Ulysses
his fir s t concern was to isolate the primary archetypes, and to estab
lish the centrality of the Mare-god.
The centrality, i f not the supremacy, of the Mare-god is given
further emphasis in Ford's study of the unity of The Mabinogi. He does
not fa il to recount Cambrensis' "outrageous rite s ," which he interprets
as a f e r t ilit y ritu a l, the mare symbolizing all generative power. This
leads him to a discussion of the Ui N eill--th e people of Tirconnell
w hom Cambrensis was describing—who are all descended, according to the
genealogies, from a King Eochu. The name is taken from the Irish "ech,"
horse; the fu ll name, Eochaid, meaning "man of the horse." Ford
points out that Maeve of Cruachan's father, as well as several of her
husbands, was named Eochaid. But the Tirconnell dynasty was hardly
singular in this 'horse' association. W e may turn to the Annals of the
112
Four Masters, nearly any version of The Book of Invasions, or to
Keating, and find that the name Eochaid has incredibly dense associa
tion with kings and demi-gods in Ireland. The true name of the fir s t
king of the Tuatha de Danann—that same Daghda w hom Jubainville strove
to anoint the Irish Zeus—was actually "Eochaid the Ollamh"—meaning
21
both "man or the horse" and "poet-priest." Indeed, the lis t of
Eochaids is so long that Keating was forced to number them to save his
readers from utter confusion. Eochaid high-kings appear from all pro
vinces, as Eochaid IV, known as "Ollamh Fodhla" or "poet-priest1of
V.
Ireland" (Fodhla being one of Ireland's three anthropomorphic female
names). This Eochaid was the Great Legislator of Ireland, who estab
lished the assembly at Tara for publishing the nation's laws every
third year. A review of the reigns of many Eochaids strongly indi
cates that the designation 'man of the horse' is more closely bound to
Druidic modes of creativity than biologic ones. Many of the Eochaids
are creators of history, law, and art: as Macha had predicated, they
often appear "a druid, a prophet, and a poet." An important point here
is , as Ford points out, "the myths that underly medieval Irish and
Welsh tales reaffirm repeatedly the female and equine nature of sover
eignty . But equally important to note is the sovereignty of the
Matriarchate was not, as patriarchal interpreters so frequently assume,
a primitive equation of kingship and fecundity in the biological sense.
Probably the most powerful Eochaid of a ll was not any of the kings,
but Eochaid Ech-bel, the chief Druid master of Alba. His nam e means
113
22
"man of the horse—horse mouth," and i t appears that druids from all
parts of the Celtic world went to learn their poetic craft lite r a lly
from 'the horse's mouth1—a phrase which conveyed no punning intent in
ancient times.
Ford himself asks the question of "what kings have to do with
horses, and what mares have to do with kings," but is w illing only to
assume "the horses were important to society in which the warrior
aristocracy figures so prominently" (p. 8). I t would seem most likely
that horses would assume immense importance in a society which had so
early domesticated the animal: one would imagine that the addition of
horse-power would be looked upon as a near-magical transformation of
the way of lif e . That in the dim past the advent of so powerful an aid
as the horse should have become blended into the religion is no sur-
prising--nor is i t surprising that the early domesticated horse would
more lik e ly be the mare than the stallion. For pre-historic horse-
tamers, until the discovery of gelding, the mare would naturally be
the easier and more trustworthy to bring into partnership with man.
Again, one wishes to stress that the relationship of horse and man, of
mare and king, appears far more intricate than the designation " fe r ti
l it y rite" denotes. The mating of mare and king does not appear to
insure fecundity of the land: the Celts were a pastoral people and not
especially devoted to cultivation and its rituals. As cattle-raisers
in a perpetually green land, the Irish Celts, at least, appear quite
114
22
His nam e means "man of the horse—horse mouth," and i t appears that
druids from all parts of the Celtic world went to learn their poetic
craft lite r a lly from 'the horse's mouth'--a phrase which conveyed no
punning intent in ancient times.
Ford himself asks the question of "what kings have to do with
horses, and what mares have to do with kings," but is willing only to
assume "the horses were important to society in which the warrior
aristocracy figures so prominently'.' (£>. 8). I t would seem most likely
that horses would assume immense importance in a society which had so
early domesticated the animal: one would imagine that the addition of
horse-power would be looked upon as a near-magical transformation of
the way of life . That in the dim past the advent of so powerful an aid
as the horse should have become blended into the religion is not sur
prising—nor is i t surprising that the early domesticated horse would
more lik ely be the mare than the stallion. For pre-historic horse-
tamers, until the discovery of gelding, the mare would naturally be
the easier and more trustworthy to bring into partnership with man.
Again, one wishes to stress that the relationship of horse and man, of
mare and king, appears far more intricate than the designation " fe rti
lit y rite" denotes. The mating of mare and king does not appear to
insure fecundity of the land: the Celts were a pastoral people and not
especially devoted to cultivation and its ritu als. As cattle-raisers
in a perpetually green land, the Irish Celts, at least, appear quite
115
unworried, even ignorant, of the notion of crop fa ilu re , drought, or
any other fam iliar archetypal agrarian f e r t ilit y symbolism. What mare
and king seem to fecundate her is a rt—the trip le ts of Danu having
merged with the twins of Macha.
As in all sacred 1 iteraturesv,. the Celtic deity appears to undergo
the many metamorphoses imposed by time,, cultural infusion, and a long
procession of redactors embellishing and distorting the original oral
tradition. Unlike the Hebrew Bible, the Greek belief-system recast by
Homer, or most other sacred writings, the Celtic materials languished
without the aid of concerted professional codification. N o synod was
ever called to separate apocrypha from scripture; no King James schol
ars were ever enlisted to reform the order of the texts and weld the
Old and New into a satisfactory unity. As of June 16, 1904, no Irish
Homer had appeared to take the ancient beliefs in hand and make them
whole again. For the savants assembled in the library in Ulysses,
"Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr. Sigerson says. Moore is
the m an for it" (p. 192). But Moore was not to be the m an for it:
Joyce had determined to reserve that place for himself. Richard Kain
sensed this accurately when he wrote, 1 1 . . . beneath the complex of
ribaldry and sentiment, blasphemy and aspiration, mockery and tender-
23
ness, so strangely compounded, there lies a deeper purpose." I f the
surface of Ulysses is a memesis of the ancient style, s t i l l , as Kain
puts i t , ". . . these pages are palimpsests on which we can barely
116
trace the half-erased writing of our predecessors" (p. 213). To write
the national epic rightly, to become the Irish Homer, Joyce had to
search far back into the beginnings: here, the female figures of
Celtic myth provide the strongest suggestions of a possible unity. And
although Joyce chose to deal primarily with the Ulster cycle and its
notable "shes," one must go back behind that cycle to trace the "myriad
metamprphoses" alluded to by Bloom--from the early straightforward pre
sentation of Danu and her trip le ts through the complex figure of Maeve
of Cruachan, the culmination of the female principle in Ireland's
greatest epic.
In The Book of Invasions, though a ll of the groups with their
demigods are intermingled through marriage,IDanu, as she is originally
presented, appears as stark and uncomplicated as the god of the early
Old Testament. To som e degree she is ah earth-mother: the naming of
the h ills of the "Paps of Anu" makes that clear. But her f e r t ilit y
aspect regarding the land is nearly neg lig ib !e--it is her intellectual
generative power which is emphasized in the Dananns themselves: they
are presented as the Magi of Greece, as i t were. Danu is definitely
genetrix of a rt, not matter, and i t . i s this crucially important d if
ference that separates Joyce's interpretation of matriarchy from that
of his contemporaries. Curiously, Joyce's intuitive interpretation has
only lately found vindication in the work of Marija Gimbutas, who, in
her archeological studies of the prehistoric Danubian peoples, is at
117
great pains to distinguish between the original "European Great God
dess" of creativity and the later "Indo-European Earth-Mother," who is
a material fecundity deity. Gimbutas' book, based on archeological
investigation of materials circa 5500 B.C., offers an assessment of the
original great queen-god which would surely have pleased Joyce, and
24
which w ill undoubtedly shed remarkable new light on Celtic studies.
In her purely Irish representation, Danu, as genetrix of a rt, original
ly had no zoomorphic aspects, no emblems, horses, or birds. She re
mained mysteriously alone, unadorned; the shadowy creator of Knowledge,
Art, and Poetry. And the people of Danu remain the undisputable ruling
power of the land through their arts. Even after the arrival of the
Milesians, when Mananaan divided Ireland so that the Dananns took pos
session of the underground, the Milesians its surface, the Dananns and
their god retained obvious power. The advent of the Milesians, and
Mananaan's divisions of the spheres dominated by the two forces, made
the Dananns into the supernatural beings of Ireland—the Sidh, pro
nounced "she." This etymological quirk served Joyce well in several
ways, by adding an extra dimension of meaning to Stephen's cry "she . .
she.. . . what she?" and Bloom's answering vision ". . . i t is she."
Nonetheless, although the Dananns metamorphosed into the Sidh, their
many arts remained superior to the Milesians, who retained strong links
with their predecessors. Joyce expresses the connection in 'Oxen' with
the cry "Return, return, Clan Milly: forget m e not 0 Milesians"
(p. 393).
118
This brings us to the Ulster cycle: at som e point between the
events and eras of the two cycles, possibly coincident with the do
mestication of the horse, Macha/Epona emerges. Macha is a good bit
more complicated and elaborate than the ancient Danu. She also has
f e r t ilit y aspects, yet the link to a rt, though more complexly presented,
is s t ill uppermost. Macha is linked to the sea-god Mananaan, who o ri
ginally disposed the relationship of Dananns and Milesians. But while
for the Rom ans Poseidon Hippios may be simply a f e r t ilit y symbol, the
Irish sea-god is not. Mananaan Mac L ir, Strange Son of Ocean and
keeper of the Land of Promise, is also the bringer of the harp and the
cup of truth to the Irish race. He does not generate art: he is,
rather, the guardian of its proper uses, as we see in the legend
25
"Cormac's Adventures in the Land of Promise." It is Macha herself
who confers a rtis tic power, as indicated in her predication that her
mate w ill be a druid, a prophet, and a poet. While Macha has developed
many aspects impinging on the world of men--a father, a ritual husband,
etc.--the addition of her hippomorphic aspect does not subsume her link
with Danu: art s t ill holds precedence over material fecundity.
The "tripleness" of the god also undergoes som e marked transforma
tions as she moves down the cycles. Where Danu -presented a consubstan-
tia l trin ity of abstracts, the later Macha has become in herself a
trip a rtite deity—m uch as the original Yaweh becomes, .by the time of
the New Testament, the mysterious Holy Trinity of three beings. 1
t
m
Macha1s tripartiteness is rather different, howeyer. She has three
manifestations: the beautiful lover, the noble horse-helpmate, and
then a third aspect emerged--the bird aspect so often depicted am ong
the Gaulish Epona's emblems. Often the birds seem simple grace-notes
to clarify or emphasize her deity; as are the singing birds which
accompany Rhiannon, or the beautiful birds that flu tte r over the Grey
of Macha on the happy journey to "The Wooing of Emer." The bird-em-
blem, however, has an intensely serious significance in the Celtic
system, and is directly connected to the art of poetry. I t is clear
from numerous tales and histories that part of the ancient druid's or
prophet's function was bird-augury.‘ Instances of court poets' reading
of bird-signs are so numerous one cannot detail them here. But the
poets' deep connection with birds can best be demonstrated by the his
toric fact that upon achieving the rank of ollamh f ile (the role desig
nated by Macha as her mate's station) the poet was invested with a robe
made of feathers. P. W . Joyce describes the emblematic vestments thus:
O n state occasions the chief poet of a ll Ireland wore a
precious mantle elaborately ornamented . . . Cormac's
Glossary . . . explains how this mantle was made: " . . .
for i t is of skins of birds and many coloured that the
poets' mantle from their girdle downwards is made, and
of the necks of drakes and of their crests [ it is made]
from their girdle upwards to their n e c k . "26
Other authorities state that the chief-poet's mantle was made of pure
white feathers only, but in any case, i t is clear that the chief-poets
were intimately connected in their calling with the power of birds.
120
This, of course, adds another dimension to our apprehension of
Stephen Dedalus, his name, and his connection with Icarus. Everywhere
the Greek and Irish symbolism intersects and multiplies significance.
More than once Stephen has stood on the library steps and attempted
bird-augury. But his dream— "Last night I flew. Easily flew." has more
resonances than those associated with the doomed flig h t of Icarus' son.
And though the departure from the library steps in Ulysses ends with "No
birds." and "Cease to strive," the omens for an Irish Dedalus are not
quite what they might seem for the Greek original (pp. 217-218). The
absence of birds here may simply indicate that Stephen is in no way .
ready to assume the ollamh file 's role of bird augury—or that his so
phistries in the library have seriously displeased the source of bird-
signs herself.
For there is another equally potent aspect to the bird-manifesta-
tion of the great queen-god. As wom an or horse she is wholly positive;
a benefactress. Her bird qualities are two-fold: on the one hand,
birds symbolize prophetic and poetic power; but equally, the bird as
pect symbolizes god as punisher, as raven or vulture of battle—the
horrific Morrigu. In early texts, Macha and Morrigu (this name also
translates "great queen") are identified as sisters. I t would seem that
by the era of the Ulster cycle, the Celtic god had evolved into a final
interlocked trin ity in Macha, Maeve, and Morrigu--horse, woman, and
bird. Morrigu is that aspect of god which presides over insanity and
battle-lu st, the two being equated in the sagas. I t is Morrigu who
121
punishes those warriors who succumb to b attle-lust, pleasure and pride
in k illin g , by lite r a lly devouring their entrails. She is the Washer at
the Ford described in such gruesome phrases as " it is a great tub of
guts the Morrigu is washing this night."
In contrast to the Teutonic Vahalla, and contrary to Jubainville
and most other interpreters, Celtic saga does not present an uncritical
glorification of the warrior. Warriors who ignore the rules of cham
pion combat, who k ill for pride and pleasure, are reduced ultimately to
carrion—lite r a lly and graphically. Nowhere is this more emphatically
presented than in the death of Cuchulain when, fin a lly abandoned by the
weeping Grey of Macha, he is disemboweled, beheaded, and then has his
sword hand hacked-off—a ll while the Morrigu perches on his shoulder.
Cuchulain meets his death because he has killed for mere prideful
spite: i t is not a noble death, nor is the wrath of Morrigu escapable.
Unlike the unpredictable interferences of the gods in the IIia d , Mor
rigu is unwavering in her punishments, which probably helps to explain
why Celtic epic offers us no ritual propitiations to the gods before
battles. The Celtic warrior knew he had only one god to answer to in
affairs of war: she was unappeasable with hecatombs, and she favored
no one. She is more nearly opposed to war in any form other than the
highly ritualized single combat of champions, and she tests the war
riors' adherences to those laws mercilessly.
The Tain or Cattle Raid of Cooley is the central epic of the
Ulster cycle, and is analogous to the Ilia d of Homer. Both epic
122
battles are surrounded with pro-tales and after-tales which enlarge and
explain the meaning of the central tragedy. By the time of the Tain in
the Ulster cycle, Macha has disappeared from the text: Maeve of Cru-
chan is the central female of the central epic. The hippomorphic as
pect has been reduced to the simplest of formulaic devices—Maeve is
merely described as the fastest runner or best athlete in her province.
But her identity as the trip a rtite deity is not d iffic u lt to discern:
'A t a ll , f a ir , long-faced wom an with soft features came
at me. She had a head of yellow hair, and two gold
birds on her shoulders . . . she carried a lig h t, sting
ing, sharp-edged lance in her hand, and she held an iron
sword with a woman's grip over her head— a massive figure.
I t was she who came against m e f i r s t . '
'Then I'm sorry for you,' Cuchulainn said, 'that was
Medb of Cruachan.'2/
This is Maeve come to battle for the bull; god in wrathful judgment,
as the two birds signify. I f th is, then, is god in the Ulster cycle,
some radical readjustments must be made in our apprehension of the
entire value-system represented by the text. The intense rage of the
god marks a new departure in the cycle: whereas Macha, ages ea rlier,
punished by negation—removal of the Ulstermen's strength and with
drawal of herself from their province, Maeve leads a ll Ireland into war
against the province. This shift in god's nature, from the remote
benificence of Danu to the vehemence of Maeve well supports Zimmer's
speculations on a matriarchy locked in a death-struggle with the grow
ing power of patriarchy. I t does not, however, necessarily reflect his
approval of the patriarchal cause.
123
In retrospect, especially aided by Ellmann's b rillia n t biography,
i t is easy to assume that Joyce would have been psychologically pre
disposed to accept or even project a matriarchal interpretation of his
racial inheritance: . .h e was genuinely interested in . . . the
28
eternal mother-faith that underlies all transitory religions." But
i t would be a vast oversimplification to categorize Joyce's interpre
tation as mere subjectivism. Joyce's mind was far to*5astute not to
recognize the implications and p itfa lls of the 'Viconian' art he prac
ticed. In his own inherited literature he has a very particularized
mother-faith to u tiliz e : once freed from Zimmer's (and everyone else's)
disdain for matriarchy per se as a social structure incapable of crea
tiv ity , the Irish texts themselves offer plentiful proofs for sustain
ing a matriarchal reading.
To begin with, why would the ancients have included in the Book of
Ballymote a lengthy history of a ll the famous wom en of Ireland from
remotest times to the English invasions, unless wom en were venerable to
them and their hearers? Moreover, Irish literature in general reflects
a culture in which wom en enjoyed remarkable power and freedom. Many
of the greatest warriors were women, including of course the arms
master herself, Scathach. (H istorically, wom en were not exempted from
the warrior's occupation until A.D. 697, when Adamnan passed a reso-
29
lution forbidding them to take part in war). More importantly,
wom en were free not merely to choose in marriage, but to boldly press
124
suit and even carry off the man of their choice, as the legend of
Grainne and Diarmuid illu strates, and as the poem "Lullaby of Adven
turous Love" so beautifully celebrates.The legend of Deirdre shows us
that wom en were free to become poets and s a tiris ts , with unlimited
court powers, and pagan poem s feature wom en evaluating the skills of
their various lovers. The culture put great emphasis, ultimately, on
the sexual relationship, which, owing to the power and independence of
the women, could not be simply assumed in a contractual possession-
submission sense. Love and mating did not turn upon possession and
pride of possession, both of which are inveighed against in the Ulster
cycle, f ir s t by Macha and then by Maeve. Wooing became, perforce, an
elaborate a rt, and the wooing tale was an established lite ra ry form
even in the oldest of cycles. Perhaps the most revealing of the ancient
courting customs, mentioned in many legends, particularly in the story
of Fann and Mananaan, is the chess ritu a l. Courting couples played
three games of chess, and the woman's winning of the odd gam e was
a sign that the match was suitable: that she was intellectually capa
ble of ruling the husband--the wifely role being that of wise counselor.
The result of the ancient society's reverence for its female deities
and deference to its mortal wom en is reflected in the literatu re by a
relaxation of the gu ilt and responsibility patterns so com m on to pa
triarchal literatures. Such agonies as adultery and illegitimacy sim
ply do not exist in pagan Irish lite ra tu re , in the sense that they
125
supply justification for killin g and disowning. For the ancient Celt
there was no double standard, chastity was pitied, and virginity had
no value whatever. Perhaps the Druid triads express i t most succinctly:
Three sister of youth: desire, beauty, generosity
Three sisters of age: a sigh, chastity, u g l i n e s s ^ O
The equalization of the roles of male and female led the ancient
society to evolve a pattern of ideal virtues which applied to both
sexes, and which were based not on prohibitions, but rather in ac
ceptance and aspiration. The ideal adult, male or female, was the
person who was wholly generous, courageous, and completely free from
jealousy. This is Maeve's c rite ria for a husband. In i t we can see,
I think, a Viconian shift in the legend from the era of Macha's c ri
teria that her mate be a druid, a prophet, and a poet. W e are coming
close to the border of the age of m en here, but Maeve s t ill retains her
deific powers. In the Pillow-Talk Maeve informs Ail i l l that she mated
with him because he is as generous and brave as herself, and because he
is not jealous--"that, too, would not suit me, for there was never a
31
time that I had not one m an in the shadow of another." These three
ultimate virtues are stressed in a broad range of Irish tales and
poems, and in such a culture, obviously, the possessiveness and pride
displayed by an Odysseus would have been looked upon not as a manly
achievement, but nearly the opposite. Nor did the Celtic concept of
sexual equality and causal freedom die easily, even under the pressures
of a patriareally-derived Christianity. As late as the fifteenth
126
century an anonymous m an expresses his "Reconeiliation" with the w om an
who is pursuing him and tempting him from his monkish calling: ". . .
le t us stretch out bodies side by side. As I have given up, 0 smooth
side, every wom an in Ireland for your sake, do you give up every m an
32
for me, i f i t is possible to do so." An eighteenth-century poet
Brian Merriman, writing s a tiric a lly against concepts of legitimacy and
fid elity, says, "The priest has failed with his whip and blinker/Now
give the chance to Tom the tinker . . . Let lovers in every lane ex-
tended/Follow their whim as God intended . . . And m en and wom en praise
33
your might/You who restore the old delight." Here Merriman is in
voking not Maeve, but Aevul of the Grey Rock, the local Sidh-god of the
night in his d is tric t. By the eighteenth century, the ancient deity of
the Celts had eroded into the province of folk-b elief; yet s t ill her
memory remai ned al i ve.
The challenge to the supremacy of the female began, however, far
earlier than the advent of Christianity. I t is the whole theme of the
Ulster cycle. Maeve's war on Ulster is precipitated, after a l l, by her
husband A ililT 's unwise and ungracious attempt to force the queen into
a subjugated and dependent role by insisting that he is richer by one
herd-bull than she— i t being the White-Horned of Connaught which has
strayed from her own herd. To restore proper balance, Maeve makes an
extremely generous offer to Ulster for the loan (not permanent posses
sion) of their great bull. I t is only after her offer is met with
absurd insolence by the Ulstermen that she actually marches on Ulster,
her gold birds riding on her shoulder.
127.
I f the 'husbandly attitude' has gone somewhat awry'in Connaught
between the time of Macha and the time of Maeve, the attitude of m en
toward w om en in U1ster since the departure of Macha has darkened into
e v il. Patrick Ford has associated the Couvade in the Welsh cycles
with punishment for "unlawful intercourse," i . e . , rape, and linked that
crime to the "Debility" (p. 13). Clearly, no one rapes Macha in the
Irish cycle—and given the 'yulgivaga deportment' of Maeye it is in
conceivable that anyone could rape her, for she is always the fir s t to
offer her favors, even to the Ulstermen. I t is equally clear, however,
that in a Matriarchate the crime of rape would be the ultimate trans
gression, and within the province of Ulster its e lf, a very tellin g pat
tern emerges am ong the princpal males of the saga. Depending on which
versions of the birth tales one chooses as logical successors to the
Genesis or "Debility" tale, i t appears that three generations of the
male line there are products of rape, rapists, or both.
Beginning with "The Birth of Conchubar," we discover that his
mother began life with the nam e Assa, meaning gentle or docile. Cath-
bad, chief Druid of Ulster, conceived a great lust for this daughter of
Eochaid, and in one night killed her twelve teachers and protectors.
Assa then assumes the name Nessa, becomes a formidable warrior, and
scourges Ireland hunting the murderer of her teachers. Finally, while
she is bathing one day in a pool, Cathbad comes between her and her
armor and forces her to submit to him. In the reasonable fashion of
Irish females, Nessa responds " It is better for m e to consent than to
128
34
be killed by thee, and m y weapon is gone." This violent abrogation
of female rights w ill have dire consequences, both as i t warps Nessa's
original goodness and warps the character of her son Conchubar.
Reconstructing the pattern of the Irish bible brings us then to
"The Birth of Cuchulain." There are several versions of this—Cuchu-
lain's actual father has been beclouded by generations of redactors and
further confused by the Revival's desire to cast the "Irish Achilles"
in the best possible ligh t, by emphasizing the version that makes him
son of the Danann Lug—"god of light" according to Jubainville. Kin-
sella's more even-handed retelling gives us some idea of the confusion,
but he refrains from choosing a single version, allowing the confused
text to suggest all of the possibilities. Choosing the least popular
version, however, gives the Ulster cycle a far more resonant and power
ful unity. In this version, Dechthire, sister of Conchubar, flees
Emain Macha with f if t y of her women. The king, as in Ford's version,
does indeed go on a "bird hunt" with his warriors. In this version
however, he comes upon a hunting-booth of woven osiers in the forest
of Leinster and, ordering the wom en within to com e out, the king and
his m en proceed to assault them, the king choosing the princess who, as
he must recognize, is his own sister. In this version, the child is
not given to the king's sister for fosterage: clearly, he is her ow n
child, and remains with her outside Ulster. She names the child Setan-
ta, the father variously and vaguely described as Lug or the mortal
129
Sualtam. I t is only when he goes to Ulster for fosterage in Concu-
bar's house that he w ill be renamed Cuchulain by the king. Accepting
this least palatable version of the hero's birth does much to explain
the strange relationship between Ulster's king and Ulster's champion—
a relationship Yeats struggled in vain to unlock dramatically in O n
Baile's Strand. The king, the trusted 'maternal uncle,' is , despite his
outward show of affection for his foster-son, continually attempting to
destroy him; Cuchulain's existence being the. palatable proof of his
crime.
Finally, in "The Wooing of Emer" which contains Cuchulain's
warrior-training by ScathaCh, we see Cuchulain best the greatest war-
0.
rio r or Alba, the princess Aife. At sword point he forces her to sub
mit to him, and she bears Connla, Cuchulain's only son. It is an
especially poignant tale in that the original impetus in the Ulster
men's encouragement of Cuchulain's marriage with Emer is that he m ay
reproduce himself--regenerate another great champion on Emer. Instead,
he regenerates himself by violence, as his father and grandfather did
before him, and eventually he w ill k ill his equally ferocious son.
Cuchulain, like Conchubar, dies without issue. Taken together, these
three contingent stories present a powerful symbolic explanation for
Ulster's isolation. The chief Druid, the king, and the champion, are
all equally violators of the female principle—of the female's sover
eign right to choose her mate. This is the only "unlawful intercourse"
130
in an otherwise sexually permissive culture.
Throughout these tales, the omnipresence of the deity is indicated
by her bird symbolism. Bird-hunting or bird-maiming is pointedly a
grievous offense. Indeed, the horrific results of bird-shooting are
repeatedly emphasized. Along with the dire circumstances of Cuchu
lain's birth, the most notable instances are the bird-hunt which dar
kens Bricriu's feast, the wounding of Fann's emissary from the Sidh
(for whose injury in her bird-form Cuchulain is horse-whipped nearly
to death), and fin a lly Connla's striking of birds, which presages his
death. Yet the deity refrains for a very long time from unleashing
her Morrigu transformation. For a great while, she continues to appear
in one beautiful symbolic bird after another—only to be struck down by
either Conchubar or Cuchulain. I t is only after repeated attack that
she fin a lly relinquishes the'beautiful, the creative, the poetic half
of her bird aspect. Stephen Dedalus1 cry— "Heavenly God"—upon his
vision of the bird-like g irl on the beach in Portrait takes on greater
complexity when juxtaposed with these materials. For Stephen, the cry
may simply be a spontaneous paean to the natural world: for his crea
tor Joyce, the naming had a deeper, more particularized significance.
One may conclude, Stanislaus notwithstanding, that Joyce "began this
fooling" far earlier than the Holies Street episode of Ulysses.
W e come back to Leopold Bloom's question—who, precisely, wrote
this tale? The poets of Ulster, to glorify their war-violence, or the
131
poets of the rest of Ireland, to condemn the same? Of course the issue
is not so pragmatic as Poldy is. S t ill, given the germ of a matriar
chal point of view, i t is possible to see the Ulster cycle, juxtaposed
with the Odyssey, as a vastly different but equally meaningful whole.
W e may see i t as a progressively engulfing tragedy in which the emer
ging forces of patriarchal possessiveness collide with the older forces
of matriarchal permissiveness", leaving Cuchulain not the glorified vic
tor, but the cruelly traduced central victim. Certainly such a conclu
sion would satisfy the private Joyce, the man who detested violence,
who had written, "Do you not think the search for heroics dam n vulgar
. . . the whole structure of heroism is, and always was, a damned
35
lie ." As regards the Irish Revival and its use of Irish texts,
Joyce's private inclinations would seem to cross over the line and be
come matter for serious historical debate. Joyce was too fine a
thinker and too great an a rtis t to build a major work on mere personal
ju s tific a tio n . The author of Stephen Hero had done so: the author
of Ulysses had learned m uch from the experience. Whatever Joyce's
predisposition, the mass of Irish text had remained unyielding and un
deciphered throughout "the search for heroics."
Som e Joycean critics have concluded that i t is vain to search for
a philosophy in the works of Joyce. I t may be fa ire r to say that the
philosophy discoverable in Joyce's works is simply so ancient that we
long ago ceased to recognize i t as such. I t is perhaps the philosophy
132
of a culture so centrally focused on a rt, on the poet and his function,
that minds of the post-Platonic world have ceased to name i t philosophy
at a ll. The life-visio n resurrected in Ulysses would have been better
understood, probably, by precursors of Homer. In any case, as we read
Ulysses, i t is clear that the person for w hom an understanding of the
ancient vision is crucial is the neophyte poet Stephen Dedalus.
Caught, like Joyce, in the swirl of conflicting demands on his g ifts ,
he must discover who and what to reject; but more importantly, who and
what to serve. Unlike Stephen Hero, a great distance has opened up
between the character Stephen and the creator Joyce by the time of the
writing of Ulysses. Like Byron and Don Juan, Joyce can manipulate the
distance, the character identification with himself, at w ill. Thus he
can make a defiant young intellectual Stephen say, "Horseness is the
whatness of all-horse1 ' without letting us, the readers, know i f Stephen
understands the significance of the words. Again, "God: noise in the
street: very peripatetic" (p. 186). The most conspicuous, persistent
noise in the street from one end of Ulysses to the other is the "steel-
ringing hooves" of horses. The question in Ulysses is, w ill Stephen
at last understand? The question for Joyce was, one supposes, will
the readers at last understand? Perhaps we can at least begin to try.
133
Notes
^ Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon, "Finn Maccool and the Final W eeks
of Work in Progress," A W ake Newsfitter, N S XVII No. 5 (October, 1980),
69-70.
2
As quoted in Richard El lmann!ls James Joyce, p. 589.
O
Rudolph Thurneyson et a l ., Studies in Early Irish Law (Dublin:
Hodges Figgis, 1936).
^ Heinrich Zimmer, as quoted in the Introduction to Leabhar nan
Gleann, ed. George Henderson (Edinburgh: Norman McLeod, 1898),
pp. 28-29.
5 Cecile O'Rahilly, Tain Bo CuaTnge (Dublin: Dublin University
Press, 1967), p. 138.
6 Daniel Binchy, Studies in Early Irish Law, pp. 180-186.
7 Thomas Kinsella, The Tain,(Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1969).
8 In a le tte r to Italo Svevo, 1921, Letters, 1, 154.
^ W . K. Magee (John Eg!inton), in The Workshop of Dedalus, ed.
Robert Scholes and Richard Kain (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1965), pp. 204-205. Subsequent quotations are from location
134
cited.
^ Kinsella, p. 216.
11 O'Rahilly, p. 193.
12
As quoted in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, p. 27.
^ Kinsella, pp. 1-2.
14
Cross and Slover, p. 210.
15
As quoted in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, p. 184.
1 f \
James Joyce, in a le tte r to Harriet Shaw Weaver, Letters, I,
137.
^ Ford, pp. 1-30.
T.G.E. Powell, The Celts (New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
1960), p. 68.
1 Q
Aniela Jaffe, "Symbolism in the Visual Arts," M an and His
Symbols, ed. Carl Jung (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 234.
20
Carl Jung, M an and His Symbols, p. 98.
^ Keating, p. 141.
99
Jubainville, p. 109.
OO
Richard Kain, Fabulous Voyager: A Study of James Joyce's
Ulysses (New York: Viking Press, 1959), p. 241.
pA
Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths
and Cult Images (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Ms.
Gimbutas' entire book is an important addition to the Graeco-Celtic
issue raised by early Celtic scholars: for concise commentary on the
pre-eminence of the great queen-god see especially pp. 195-197.
135
23 Cross and Slover, pp. 503-507.
26 P.W. Joyce, p. 446.
2^ Kinsella, p. 208.
28
Richard Ellmann, Janies Joyce, p. 103.
29 P.W. Joyce, p. 96.
30
David Greene and Frank O'Connor, A Golden Treasury, p. 105.
3^ Cross and Slover, p. 238.
32
David Greene, An Anthology of Irish Literature (New York:
Modern Library, 1954), p. 221.
33 Op. c i t . , p. 252.
34
Cross and Slover, p. 133.
35 As quoted in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, p. 199.
Chapter I I I
Stephen: Telemachus, Cormac, Cuchulain -
or Usurpation and Warrior Retribution
The hum an world of Ulysses is, on its surface, the twentieth-
century Eliotic waste land in which the great traditions of the past,
particularly the voice of religion, have become unintelligible and
ineffectual for ordinary men. Bloom cannot understand the meaning of
the burial service conducted for Dignam, nor is his Hebraic heritage
m uch comfort to him (God wants blood sacrifice). Stephen has out-
rightly rejected Catholicism, and can find no solace in his obscure
ethnic heritage,.wherein he misinterprets Mananaan as a menacing god
and mythic mother Ireland as treacherous G um m y Granny. Indeed, so far
removed are the Irish characters from their original be!ief-system that
Buck Mulligan, "equine-faced" though he is , identifies the sea as "our
> mighty mother," and i t is not.until the end of ’Proteus' three chapters
later that Stephen dispels Buck's misnomer in his own mind and correct
ly recognizes the sea as "Old Father Ocean," the male principle.
For Buck Mulligan to be so hopelessly muddled in his relation to
his heritage is in part comic f i l l i p —especially as he is entertaining
137
the "Sassenach" Cel tophile Haines: in this 'theology' episode, the
Buck's 'missed understandings' and Haines' assiduous absorption of them
constitute amusing Joyce sarcasm. But for the true heir, Stephen/Tele-
machus, the rupture with even these most primal symbols of his heritage
is a more serious matter. Stephen set out in Portrait to become the
spokesman for the conscience of his race*, the Stephen we find at the
opening of Ulysses appears farther than ever from his goal. I f the
most basic emblems of the ancient belief are unrecognizable to him,
there seems l i t t l e hope that he will forge the fragments into a mean
ingful and sustaining unity. As Ulysses opens we find a Stephen de
feated in his heroic flig h t of P o rtrait: his tower held by usurpers,
his mother—on all symbolic levels—declared "beastly dead" by M ulli
gan. Stephen does indeed seem paralyzed, as Buck asserts; rounding
him back, as a Joycean character, to the fate of a ll the earlier
Dubliners.
By the time of the writing of Ulysses, the original Stephen Hero
who was nearly indistinguishable from Joyce himself has evolved into
i
Stephen Dedalus: a character in the hands of a creator now nearly
twice his age and for w hom the search for heroics has become "a damned
lie ." Yet Stephen is s t ill on a quest: i f not for the lite ra l war-
rior-heroics of a father as Telemachus was, he nonetheless seeks the
role of racial spokesman s t i l l . And though Joyce is carefully mani
pulating his character with a great deal of mature experience at this
point, Stephen's goal its e lf has not become less worthy to his creator.
138
Stephen's goal its e lf has not become less worthy to his creator.
Stephen's attitudes may be treated with considerable irony; his as
piration is not. A s Stanislaus Joyce te lls us, Joyce5"be!ieved that
poets in the measure of their gifts and personality were the reposi
tories of the genuine spiritual lif e of their race, and that priests
were usurpers."^ In Joyce's complex Graeco-Celtic epic, then, w e
discover a Telemachus whose quest i t is to become Homer—a literary
situation at least as complicated as Stephen's attempt to "prove by
algebra" that Shakespeare was his own grandfather. The character seeks
once more to be fused with the author: Stephen is blindly setting out
to write Ulysses. This quest, and its attendant confrontations with
'usurpers,' is at once as universal as the Odyssey and as particular
ized as Joyce's Dublin. For Joyce, there were many kinds of priests
busily usurping his kingdom.
Stephen's decision to become a 'priest of the imagination' in
P o rtrait, surrounded as i t is by Druidic portents—the she-bird of the
beach, the fires in the wood, the instinctive tree-worship—needs to
be differentiated from the more generalized (or perhaps more metaphor
ic) Romantic's or Aesthete's concept of 'a religion of a r t.' To
Shelley's assertion that "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of
the world," Revival scholars of Joyce's time could rejoin that, in
Ireland at least, poets were historically and lite r a lly the acknow
ledged legislators of the nation: "In pagan times the druids were
the exclusive possessors of whatever learning was then known.
139
They combined in themselves all the learned professions: they were
not only druids but judges, prophets, historians, poets, and even phy
sicians. But as time went on there was a gradual tendency toward
2
specialization." One of the fir s t instances of specialization—a
breaking-up of the druids' total control of their society— is found,
fittin g ly enough, in the reign of Conchubar of Ulster. There, as
legend has i t , the king grew intensely annoyed, in the midst of a le
gal hearing, with the elaborate 'secret language' of poetical judicial
argument which he could not understand. So irrita te d was Conchubar
by his in a b ility to follow the argument that he abruptly announced
henceforth, "the privilege of judication was taken from the poets and
3
committed to the hands of special judges." Nevertheless, the earliest
poet-priests exercised virtual total control over their society, and as
O'Curry explains, they tended to construct a civilizatio n arranged p ri
marily to foster the art of literatu re: " It is but reasonable to
think that such people . . . commenced at a very early period to con
struct some kind of social and political system regulated by fixed and
determined rules, and suited to foster and protect the exercise of
their particular genius . . . I t is more than a reasonable assump
tion, when we consider that the poets were both priests and lawmakers,
their old god the god of Knowledge, Art, and Poetry, and their position
such that no king could speak in their presence without permission.
These powerful m en did, apparently, elaborate the ancient 'commandment'
for generosity into substantial and intricate form in the hospitality
140
laws—of which the foremost recipients were the poets themselves. A s
one of the early triads expresses i t , the third of the "vats whose
5
depth no m an knows" is "the vat of the poet's privilege."
I t is traditionally acknowledged that the judgments of Cormac Mac
Art, the "Irish Solomon," constitute a large portion of the Brehon
Law: whether or not the famous king himself actually wrote the o ri
ginal codified privileges of the poets into the law, the extensive and
elaborate legal privileges of the poet class are apparent from the
commentaries of a second Cormac—Cormac Mac CuHenan, author of
Cormac*s Glossary, a work which interprets, am ong other aspects of the
Brehon Law, the archaic codes governing the poets. Using Cormac1s
Glossary, P.W. Joyce relates:
In Ireland the position of the poets constituted per
haps the most singular feature of society. I t had
its origin in the intense and universal veneration for
learning . . . Every ollave f il e was entitled to re
ceive presents from those . . . to w hom he presented
his poetical compositions . . . The ollave poet was
entitled to go on cuairt . . . he went through the
country at certain intervals with a retinue of twenty-
four of his desciples or pupils, and visited kings and
chiefs . . . who were expected to lodge and entertain
them a ll for som e time with lavish hospitality, and on
their departure present the ollave with some valuable
present for his poetry . . . The poet also had, a right
to entertainment in houses of public hospitality . . .
The rights of poets to be entertained and paid for their
poem s was universally acknowledged; and few persons had
the courage to break through the custom; for i t was
considered disgraceful to refuse a poet his guerdon.b
And the cost of the poet's guerdon was not triflin g : a blooded race
horse was considered f i t price for one poem. In one delightful
141,
ninth-century poem a f ile excoriates his "Miserly Patron" with, "I
have heard/He does not bestow horses for poems;/He gives what fits
his kind,/A cowl"^
James Joyce had, then, a more than whimsical (or even socialist)
basis for his complaint that the state should support him: had he
been born in a different epoch in his own land, the state, under Brehon
Law, would have had to support him. In pagan Ireland the poet's domain
was not a Romantic's or Aesthete's 'kingdom of imagination' set over
against the mundane world: in pagan Ireland the two were one—a Yeat
sian separation of poetic versus m aterialistic lif e had not yet taken
place. The 'Telemachus' episode of Ulysses offers ample demonstration
of the reverse: we find an enormous contrast between the conscience
im plicit in the ancient laws and what is transpiring in the tower on
/
Sandymount Cove. Not only country or dwelling-place is being usurped,
but, more importantly, Stephen's rights and privileges as Ireland's
poet. Stephen has had to pay the rent on the tower, and is s t ill
nine pounds in debt to Buck. Moreover, in abrogation of the hospitali
ty law, the key to the tower is demanded of him. Haines receives his
poettc witticisms for his collection, but when asked pointedly "Would
I make money by it?" counters with "I don't know, I'm sure," a double
irony for one who is both a 'Celtic scholar' and arrogantly proud to
pay his way. Mulligan is annoyed that Stephen lacks the finesse to
extract money from Haines—but Stephen, as a true heir or f ile , pro
perly should have no need for finesse or haggling. Support and tribute
242-
are his by right--or were, before the poet's privilege was usurped by
the priests, and the Brehon Law replaced by the English. Far from
feeling 'disgrace,' Buck fu lly expects Stephen to stand drinks all
'round from his scholar's wages, while his old castoffs mark him as a
"Miserly Patron" of an extreme ( i f comical) degree. In the library
episode, Eglinton complains that Stephen is the only contributor who
asks payment of Dana--to which Stephen haughtily (and ju s tifia b ly , un
der Brehon law) replies that Dana may print the Shakespeare interview—
for a guinea. S till later in the novel we see Stephen stand drinks,
and pay for himself and Lynch in another sort of 'house of public hos
p ita lity .' Throughout the novel Stephen is surrounded by breakers of
the ancient laws; pointedly, the worst offenders are those with the
loudest claims to being 'C e ltic is ts ,' and Joyce manipulates the con
trast between the professed aims of those Cel tophiles and their ig
norance of actual Celtic tradition with controlled, relentless irony.
Buck's mock-mass and mockery of Catholic ritual at the beginning
of Ulysses, while seeming to align him with Stephen in opposition to
the usurping priests, are at best only a sham mockery of a usurpation
he cares nothing about. Buck's real usurpation lies in his dismissal
of the spiritual nature of m an with a relentless scientific reduction
of life to matter only (the mother is "beastly dead" implying the
soul-less state of animal li f e ) . As Stephen explains, i t is not the
insult to the mother that separates him from Mulligan, but the insult
to himself: here the priest of imagination confronts the practitioner
143
of empirical science--a com m on enough confrontation in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, but one that takes on added dimensions in an
arena where the priest's, poet's.and physician's roles were once com
bined in a single.office, the druid. Stephen's fight, unlike Tele-
machus', is not to replace one force with another: to regain his
birthright he must struggle to synthesize once more a fractured heri
tage. He must find a way, as Joyce so succinctly expresses i t , to make
the "bits all kkrrrklak in place clack back" (p. 42). Mulligan's
mockery of priesthood has begun to bore Stephen: on another level, i t
has begun to seriously offend him. And i f Mulligan had any deeper
knowledge of the Celtic world than the cheap folkisms he retails to
Haines, he might understand the depth of the schism.
One needs to be careful, when interpreting Stephen's (or Joyce's)
hatred of the priest as usurper, to discriminate between the very early
saints and sages (whom Stephen and Joyce clearly revere) and the later
clerics who submitted to Rom an domination and relinquished their poetic
8
calling along with their wives, children, and ancient traditions. In
the long history of the poets' struggle to preserve their domination of
Irish culture, the early clerics played a prominent and positive role.
At f ir s t , the introduction of Christianity merely added another di
mension to the poetic office and its attendant privileges; for most of
the early priests were plainly druids or f i l i who adopted Christianity
as an adjunct to their learned profession. As O'Curry explains, "ap
parently Patrick found his followers among the already-existing body
1.44
g
of learned men, the f iliv " . I t was Dubthach. King Leary's chief ollamh,
who f ir s t declared Patrick's teachings to have learned value, and while
Dubthach himself did not convert, he gave one of his pupils into
Patrick's care to be trained as Bishop of Leinster. The young poet-in-
training was Fiaccre, later canonized, whose derisive laughter Stephen
imagines he hears on the beach in 'Proteus^'
In this era of Irish history as in no other, the religious leader
ship of the culture had "become of twosome twiminds forenenst gods,
hidden and discovered" (FW, p. 188). Living in combined monastic/po
etic institutions, the Church and the poets' Corporation shared not
only buildings, but com m on instruction; and the early clergy synthe
sized both traditions with a distinction rarely matched: this pivotal
epoch in Irish Christianization produced a host of quite lite ra l
‘priests of the imagination' or 'saints of 1 iterature^'. m en and w om en
who combined the monastic and poetic offices without conflict of
conscience, and without relinquishing the art which earned their spe
cial privileges—poetic composition. I t is possible that the f i l i who
also took Holy Orders retained membership in the powerful poets' Cor
poration as well—as P.W. Joyce remarks, "The ancient Irish saints
were in the habit of making a Union . . . with each other . . . This
union is very often mentioned in the Lives of the Saints, but what
i t constituted is not c l e a r . I t is clear that these early clerics
were, for obvious reasons, staunch defenders of poetic freedom and p ri
vilege; and the greatest champion amongst them was Columcille,
145
the celebrated "Dove of the Church," and perhaps Ireland's fir s t l i t
erary exile.
The synthesis of the two priesthoods is chrystalized in the life
of Columcille, whose early education was with a druid master, and
among whose attributed works we find the wonderful poem to Jesus be
ginning "My Druid is the son of God."^ While Stephen, in Ulysses,
pays more noticeable homage to "fiery Columbanus"—perhaps the more
glamorous and certainly the more 'continental' of Ireland's two
Columbs--Joyce early commemorated Columcille in his Aran Island essay,
and there linked Columcilie's ancient sanctuary with the hospitality
laws. In that essay, as Joyce's companion attempts to pay for som e
modest refreshment, "The old lady rejects the money almost angrily, and
asks us i f we are trying to dishonor her house." This vestigial re
sponse to the old generosity code is subtly echoed in the tower scene
of Ulysses, where the blundering Englishman Haines insists that the
milk-woman— that strange messenger from the morning world—be paid.
Her response to Haines' all-too-English question, "Have you your
b i l l ? --"Bi11, sir?"—underscores a fundamental difference in racial
conscience: of course the milk-woman keeps no formal b ills . She does
not "upbraid," as Joyce's Aran islander did, but the ironies are
compounded as she reckons the amount owed: she sum s up the charges
for what they have ordered, leaving out her calculation the extra
"measureful and t illy " she habitually gives them. Thus, no matter what
they pay her, the old wom an is enacting a generosity which escapes the
146
notice of Mulligan and Haines (though Stephen is aware of the extra
measure). The final ironic twist is the discovery that they haven't
enough to pay the b ill in f u ll, which gives Stephen, who is acutely
sensitive to the cultural gaff, the opportunity to fight matters by
saying, "We'll owe twopence," affording her the final gesture of gener
ous ity , "Time enough, s ir . . . Time enough," as he lays the coin in
her "uneager hand." The motif is amplified in 'Nestor!: "And now his
strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarassed hand moved over the
shells." Stephen gathers in Deasy's money "with shy haste," soon mak
ing his hand "free again" for the shells—a symbol of beauty and power
not "soiled by greed and misery" (p. 30). The old law of generosity
and hospitality which governed particularly the poets' privileges is
usurped repeatedly throughout Ulysses, and Stephen's p itifu lly inef
fectual attempts to reinstate his poet's 'guerdon' stand in stark con
trast to an earlier age when, under the old belief-system, Columcille
returned from exile and restored the poets' rights with ease.
Although he was canonized for his dove-like humility, Columcille
ironically shows himself rather fiercely hawk-like throughout his
career; particularly in regard to his literary pursuits. Balked,
Columb could intone curses and threats with the best of the old
druids--as he did when his pagan rival Lon inhospitably refused Columb
12
the use of his lore-books. Indeed, though his sainthood rests on
the selflessness he displayed in bringing the Word to the pagans of
Alba, his exile on Iona was the result of a long legal wrangle with
147
other saints over possession of a psalter—whether of pagan or Chris
tian chants we shall never know—during which he displayed ferocious
temper in defense of his rights. Columcilie's banishment to Iona would
appear to have had more to do with his lite ra ry position than with the
chastening of his pridefulness in claiming ownership of this manuscript.
One wonders i f Columcille was not in fact concomitant head of the po
ets' Corporation, and i f his banishment was not a p o litic a lly motivated
one—for immediately upon his banishment to Iona, the nobles of Ireland
proclaimed an end to the payment of poet-tribute in any d is tric t. The
wonderful tale of Columcilie's landing on the shore blindfolded (one of
the conditions of his exile was that he could never set eyes on Ireland
again) to address the assembly that debated the dissolution of poets'
rights, and the fact that Columcille was s t ill powerful enough even in
banishment to force the nobles to reinstate Cormac's laws of poet-
tribute, gives us som e idea both of Columcilie's stature as repre
sentative of the poet-class, and of the cultural force and ingrained
obedience the role of poet s t ill presented to the populace of that
time. Not only the ambivalent clergy, i t would seem, but all of Ire
land was of "twosome twiminds" between the old gods and the new: while
the old names—Danu, Ecne, Bridgit, Maeve—were suppressed, i t was the
laws of their old be!ief-system Columcille was relying upon, and the
nobles responded to i t . In this instance, the 'blind' exile's un
expected return saved the day for the poets. Stephen's 'blind' walk
along the beach in 'Proteus' stirs many echoes, including Columcille's
148
blindfolded "seer's return." Stephen's own bedraggled "lap-wing" re
turn after his brief try at ejcile stands in yivid contrast to the
heroic one of the great Dove—but then, Stephen has yet to earn his
credentials am ong the saints and sages. He hasn't fallen and risen as
Columcille did; he is not a seasoned and well-credentialed poet-priest.
He has fe lt humiliation, but he has not yet learnt humility: he merely
hoped to follow in the giant footsteps of the great peregrinators, and
derides himself accordingly in 'Proteus'.
For the moment, at least, this second serious attempt to dilute
the poets' central control over Irish culture was thwarted by Colum
c ille , and the ollamhs with their retinues continued to avail them
selves of due hospitality and collect their tribute. Throughout the
long history of the Irish poet-class, from druid to f ile to bard, the
nobles (and subsequently foreign overlords) continued, with increasing
success, to resist and subvert the Brehon laws. Eventually, the
super-structure of the poets' Corporation, the Brehon Law, the Bardic
schools, the yearly tribute-progress and all the rest eroded away under
the impact of the Norman invasions, the capitulation of the Irish
clergy to Rome, and fin a lly English domination and language suppres
sion. The last formal tribute-progress took place in 1808, when "The
Bard O'Kelly" made a solo circu it of Connaught, visiting the great
13
houses with mixed success; we arrive fin a lly at the last Irish bard,
Anthony Raftery (c. 1784-1835), who sum s up succinctly:
149
Behold m e now
With m y back to the wall
Playing music
To empty pockets'4
In his own way, Raftery was heroic—a blind old m an refusing to allow
his traditions to die. Perhaps i t was his stance, as much as the
acerbic quality of his poetry, that prompted Joyce’s attention to him
both in the critic a l writings and in Ulysses. But stubbornly deter
mined though he may have been, i t is quite apparent, even from the
designations "the Bard O'Kelly" or "last of the Irish Bards," that
Raftery's struggle was fu tile . B y the 1800‘s, the term f ile , oilamh
f il e , and indeed the whole intricate classification system of poetic
hierarchy had dropped from the racial memory. Raftery, the final
figure in the long descent of the "children of Danu" and the legal sys
tem which guaranteed the supremacy of poetry, could stand symbol for
the dissolution of old Ireland's 'holy o ffic e ': the poet isolated,
unattended, beggared. He ends where Stephen begins in the tower, and
that is a long way from privilege, from priesthood. This, then, is
the particularized Irish heritage of ‘priests of the imagination'
against which Joyce sets his Irish Telemachus.
In the tower, Haines the Englishman is a usurper only provisional
ly and to p ic a lly --it is the Buck himself who desires to usurp Stephen's
place in a way that not even the "jack-priests" he mocks could do.
Like countless generations of druids, saints, and sages before them,
Buck and Stephen grapple for supremacy in the tower--Buck fearing the
"lancet" of Stephen's art as Stephen fears that of his. Each of the
150
contestants is part of what originally constituted a whole druid: Buck
is a physician, but aspires to combine that with a lite ra ry career;
Stephen is a poet, and has sought to combine that with a medical career.
Both have flaunted the Christian religion, but only Buck is cheerfully
willing to go forward with no be!ief-system at a ll. In Buck, Stephen
stands face to face with a twentieth-century usurpation perhaps more
deadly and insidious than any of the old ones: he faces the s p irit of
Nietzschean philosophy. Within a Celtic context, to say that'.the mother
is "beastly dead" is equivalent to saying "God is dead." The term
"mother" of course brings with i t a host of connotations beyond the im
mediacy of May Goulding—Mother Ireland, to be sure, but more subtly
the shadows of the 'great mothers' Macha and ultimately Danu herself.
Added to this, the c ra ftily selected term "beastly" calls up the animal
transformation aspects of the old god, so crucial to the ancient be
lie f; both the hippomorphic and ornithomorphic spheres of influence.
"Beastly dead" cuts two ways, as the Buck uses it : the phrase both
conjures up the vital animal aspects of the old god, and at the same
time denies the mystical or symbolic significance of such suggestive
connotations. There is no room in Buck's scheme of things for con
templating possibilities like metempsychosis, much less recognizing the
symbolic portents buried in his thoughtless idiomatic remark. The im
plication of soul-less-ness, the reduction of beings to mere matter--
either quick or dead--are not only acceptable to Buck, but considered
by him an attitude superior to Stephen's.
151
Buck's new paganism, like Buck's generosity, has a hook buried in
i t . Release from the Catholic strictures, without a replacement by
som e other code of responsibilities, leads to nihilism and the void.
W e see this played out in Buck's portrait: his clinical medical real
ism has made him insensitive to the hum an and spiritual needs around
him. "I see them . . . cut up into tripes in the dissecting room . . .
I t simply doesn't matter": to speak thus to a friend who has just lost
his mother in one of the ugliest of deaths is more than insensitive;
i t is unnecessary and cruel, as is his maliciously repeated reminder
that Stephen killed his mother. For pragmatic Buck, going through the
m um m ery of belief for form's sake seems innocuous enough—but is i t
really all that harmless? Buck goes through the mummery of generosity
and hospitality but feels neither. The nine pounds Stephen owes him
exacts its interest not merely in tower rent or money for drinks, but
in an unhealthy opportunity to mock and b e little a 'friend' who he
knows outstrips him in poetic gifts: "Ah Dedal us, the Greeks. I must
teach you." Buck offers hospitality to Haines while despising him, and
delights in palming off false "Irishisms' on him; indeed, hopes to use
Stephen's gifts to cadge money from him. For himself, Buck has no real
understanding of Ireland, no kindred s p irit for his folk, as his cheer
fu lly careless ridicule of the old milk-woman demonstrates. Buck is
simply heartless and a user. He uses his advantages—money and an
Oxford education—to bind the brighter light Stephen to him so that he
may shine the more; he uses Haines to sell Irishness, as he hopes;
152
he uses the milk-woman to show o ff his w it. Closely observed, Buck is
the embryo of what Joyce—and eventually the world—could perceive of
Nietzsche's new young superman: heroic but soul-less; a m an without
conscience and therefore without humanity; a m an ultimately capable of
cruelty without remorse.
Buck's Nietzschean pagan "theology" is the real usurper in the
tower. Ellmann has speculated that Joyce found the basis for his ow n
paganism—a ju s tifie d selfishness and 1icentiousness--in his flirta tio n
with Nietzsche's doctrines. There is certainly a remarkable correla
tion between Nietzsche's pronouncements and certain passages and con
cepts in Joyce's works. Moreover, there seems to be a deliberate re
plication of phraseology and metaphor; most noticeably from passages
in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and E vil. There, Neitzsche describes the
process which will produce the elevated and powerful new breed of
philosophers as ". . . a transvaluation of values, under the new pres
sure and hammer of which a conscience should be forged and a heart
15
transformed into brass . . . " The general theme Beyond Good and Evil
is strikingly 'Stephen Heroish' in its exaltation of the superior in
dividual; the forging of a conscience is Stephen Dedalus' precise
mission--nearly his exact terminology. But the differences are all the
most accentuated by the echoes. The transvaluation of values James
Joyce embarked upon when he set out to write Ulysses move in the oppo
site direction from that which Nietzsche had in mind. A young Stephen
Hero might have followed the call of Nietzsche uncritically; a mature
153
James Joyce seems bent on demonstrating the exact reverse of the doc
trine of the strong man. Nietzsche's emphasis fa lls entirely on the
desirability of hardness, ruthlessness—what he conceives as the ex
clusively masculine nature of leadership. Germany's contemporary
leadership in European philosophy he attributes directly to "the in
superably strong and tough masculine character of the great German
philologists and historical critics" (p. 838). W e have already made
brief acquaintance with one of those philologists—Heinrich Zimmer:
keeping in mind that these same m en were responsible for the original
reconstruction of Celtic myth, i t is not d iffic u lt to see where Joyce
departed from their dogmatic Aryan outlook, nor why he deliberately,
through both phraseology and concepts draws Nietzsche's thought into
Ulysses for confrontation. Beyond Good and Evil contains a passage
which seems especially pertinent to the tower scene in Ulysses—both
for the choice of controlling metaphor and for its implications, which
culminate in 'Circe.' The new breed of leaders, the "free s p irits,"
says Nietzsche:
will avow among themselves a delight in denial and
dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty that
knows how to handle the knife surely and d eftly, even
when the heart bleeds. They will be sterner . . .
than humane people w ill desire, they w ill not deal with
the "truth" in order that i t may please them, or "ele
vate" and "inspire" them—they w ill rather have l i t t l e
faith in "truth" bringing with i t such revels for the
feelings . . . Perhaps they w ill not only have a smile,
but a genuine disgust, for all that is thus rapturous,
id ealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic . . . (p. 839).
154
The surgical metaphor here, when juxtaposed with what we see of Buck's
treatment of his 'friend' Stephen, and what we shall see of the "medi
cals'" behavior in 'Oxen', sharpens the focus on Joyce's rejection of
the Neitzschean vision. In 'C irce', with the central figure of Leopold
Bloom before us, we w ill feel the fu ll impact of "genuine disgust" for
the feminine and hermaphroditic components of Bloom's nature: clearly,
the reflection is not of Joyce's disgust, but redounds upon the medi
cals in particular ( i t is Buck who declares Bloom "bisexually abnor
mal"), and the patriarchal bias in general. Buck's identification with
the surgical metaphor, his nonchalant cruel "truths" to Stephen— "He
> . . ^
k ills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers,"—mark him out as
very near the Neitzschean ideal, in attitude, at least. Yet when Buck
proffers the "new pagansim" to Stephen in the tower, Stephen rejects i t .
Joyce seems in truth to have had l i t t l e a ffin ity for the "new
paganism"—a paganism centered in self. While he certainly embraced a
selfishness necessary to an a rtis t and a licentiousness beyond the pale
of Catholocism, he could find models much closer to home— in the old pa
ganism outlined in works 1ike The Book of Ballymote and.the Brehon Law.
His pagansim is rather the very ancient one he inherited and set about
to revive in his art. Joyce needed a belief in something, and he had
as well a deep sense of mission, as Vico did. Stephen's dreadful sense
of responsibility— "! couldn't save her. Agenbite of Inwit"—has its
roots in Joyce's own need for responsibility to something—his race.
Breaking with modern Catholicism, Joyce searched for and reconstructed
15 5'
the elder god of Ireland. A paganism without a god-system suited Joyce
no more than the "yogi bogey boa" Theosophy movement of Yeats and Rus
sell, or its sister Aesthete movement, the Art for Art's Sake of
George Moore. The creation of new 'religions of art' would seem super
fluous indeed while there lay, in the dusty archives, an actual and
historically real religion of a rt—the inheritance of the Celtic ra c e -
awaiting resurrection. Art for god's sake, even when that god is Art
personified, was for the ancients something very different than art
for art's sake in the modern world. The old poet-priests composed in
tribute to the god of art in Ireland, but as priests, their art was
tied to responsibility to the people of the god. Their art sought to
serve the race with truth, even when the truth was not beautiful to
behold: in doing so, i t condemned as m uch as i t praised; i t satirized
perhaps more than i t eulogized; i t did not etherealize or disguise the
actual. However, the ancient poets composed for the sake of the peo-r
pie—to illuminate, to admonish, to teach, and to inspire. In doing
so, they did not, as Neitzsche's "new breed" would have i t , reject the
concept that truth might very well afford "revels for the feelings."
The rapturous, the id ealistic, the whole emotional range of hum an ex
perience was integral to their a rt, as i t is in the day-to-day life of
a culture. The old calling, for all its privilege, was not a self-
centered or self-serving a rt, but a societal one. This suited Joyce's
temperament: he craved system and order, and so he reconstructed
the pagan belief-system of the Celts; the very act of doing so being
156.
his 'devotion'—his release from the Agenbite of Inwit.
Buck's superman paganism is , in fact, anathema to the old paganism
Stephen is destined to represent; and pointedly, i t is Stephen who
'keeps the fa ith ' in the tower after a l l —albeit he does so almost
unconsciously. Retreating from his original ultimatum, "I'm not a
hero . . . i f he stays on here I'm o ff," Stephen quickly apprehends that
i t is not Haines who is the foe. To Buck's offer to punish and eject
Haines, thus tightening the bonds between himself and Stephen--"To
outselves . . . new paganism . . . omphalos"—Stephen counters with
"Let him stay." O n the Homeric level, Stephen thus appears to parallel
the ineffectual ness of Telemachus. In the Celtic dimension, however,
Stephen's rejection of Buck's offer is a tentative move toward the old
laws of hospitality and generosity. Of course, at the opening of the
novel, Stephen s t ill has everything to learn about hum an generosity:
he w ill learn the real truth of hospitality and generosity from Bloom.
Nonetheless, rejecting Buck’s offer to callously eject Haines is a
positive portent—a symbol of the schism between Buck's conscience-less
new paganism and the conscience of the old paganism. Instinctively,
Stephen has countered the greater of the two usurpations; the invi
tation to hard-heartedness. The intricate ancient discipline of gene
rosity and hospitality appears as foreign to Mulligan as i t does to
Haines (who asks suspiciously in 'Wandering Rocks;' "This is real
Irish cream I take i t . . . I don't want to be imposed on.") Buck's
invitation to Hellenize Ireland is really, like m uch of the Revival
157'
a c tivity, an appeal to the ego, to aggrandizement, rather than to a
true restoration of old Ireland. Perhaps the most tellin g emblem of
Mulligan's incapacity for generosity is his gruff, comfortless retort
to Stephen's rebuff, "Give up the moody brooding," coupled with his
singing of Yeats' "W ho Goes with Fergus"—the song he well knows
Stephen sang to his dying mother.
Yeats' "W ho Goes with Fergus" is woven through Ulysses as a
Wagnerian leitm otif for Stephen's mother-guilt: but the song, like
every Joycean device, has multiple symbolic reverberations. The song
both echoes an ancient theme of usurpation and emphasizes the extent to
which the modern Irish are severed from the voice of their fir s t r e li
gion. I t is also, one suspects, a genuine instance of Joycean "Celtic
revenge" on William Butler Yeats and his sort of Revival. W ho goes
with Fergus, who went with Fergus, who Fergus was, marks a distinct
and important schism between Yeats' approach to the Celtic world and
Joyce's own. In the Ulster cycle, Fergus is the rightful king, and an
exemplary honorable and just ruler. He marries the great warrior-queen
Nessa, who, as we have seen, was violated and dramatically altered in
temperament;. Though Fergus has sons of his own, Nessa manipulates Fer
gus into agreeing to allow her child Conchubar (product of Cathbad's
rape) to s it on the throne for one year—so that people may say of him
that he once sat on the throne of Ulster. As a kindness, Fergus agrees.
Whether this is Nessa's revenge on Ulster is never clear in the cycle,
but the result for the province, and for Fergus, is disastrous: he
158 ’
never regains the throne, and Conchubar proves to be a violent king.
I t is when Conchubar attains manhood that one of the pro-tales of the
cycle assumes vital significance in an understanding of Fergus' char
acter: this is the story of Dierdre, or The Fate of the Sons of Usnech.
While one cannot relate the entire legend here, the basic factors are
that Conchubar developed an obsessive lust for the magical Dierdre,
who eluded him and ran off with Naisi, prince ol; Scotland, and his two
brothers. In a final ploy to recapture Dierdre, Conchubar chose Fergus
to go to the three Scottish princes and invite them to return to Ulster,
Not realizing the king intends treachery, Fergus convinces a reluctant
Dierdre and the three sons of Usnech whom he reveres to return to
Emain Maeha for a reunion feast, and sends his own son with them as a
guarantee or honor-pledge. The wily king has already prearranged for
Fergus to be delayed on the return march; so that when Dierdre and her
husband and family arrive, the king is able, without interference, to
murder the Scottish nobles and Fergus' son—who dies trying to protect
Naisi in fulfillm ent of Fergus' honor-pledge. Cheated of his throne
and now robbed of his honor, Fergus marches back to Emain Macha, lays
waste to the capital, and quits Ulster forever, followed by three
thousand disgusted opponents of Conchubar. Fergus remains for the rest
of his lif e an embittered exile in Connaught.
The introduction of Fergus' song in 'Telemachus' has the effect of
reviving a historic Celtic usurpation and wandering to counterpoint the
Homeric one, but the reverberations do not end there. As Buck descends,
159
intoning Stephen's successful riv a l's song, Stephen's mind wanders to
"The twining stresses two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings
merging their twining chords" (p. 9). W e may begin to unravel this
strange clue with the simplest 'two!: Yeats' interpretation of Fergus
is two-fold—the song "W ho Goes with Fergus" and its companion-piece,
"Fergus and the Druid." Taken together, Yeats gives us a very ethereal
transformation—a Fergus who voluntarily rejects the mundane world of
kingship for the greater rewards of the kingdom of the imagination. In
Yeats' handling, Fergus comes to serve the ends of the "Celtic Twilight"
movement very beautifully indeed. The poetry is exquisite and soothing;
but unfortunately, in the Ulster cycle, Fergus never ceased to brood
for his lost kingdom, and that bitterness fin a lly extended to include
everyone in the cycle--Nessa, Conchubar, and ultimately the great
queen-god Maeve herself. Fergus' brooding forms one of the principle
motivations of the entire epic; for he ultimately betrays the great
queen's cause despite her generosity and the trust she has placed in
him as general of her army. Indeed, i t is Fergus' continual diatribes
against wom en in general and Maeve in particular that probably led
Frank O'Connor to read the cycle as an ancient anti-feminist poem
(although a ll of the Ulstermen are much given to anti-female pro-
noouncements--even the bull who precipitates the war has strayed out of
Maeve's herd "refusing to be led by a woman."
How Yeats transformed this b itte r victim of usurpation into a
siren—call to leave the world of mundane concerns behind brings us to
. rsF
the next set of twos in Joyce's double-twinning clue. Yeats took his
vision of Fergus from Samuel Ferguson's long poem, The Abdication of
17
Fergus MacRoy. Ferguson, one of the pioneer Revival poets w hom Yeats
acknowledges in "To Ireland in the Coming Times," presents a Fergus
who, rather than being tricked by Nessa into giving up the throne to
Conchubar, voluntarily, for love of Nessa, allows the boy to s it beside
him and participate in the king's judiciary function. Conchubar proves
so b rillia n t and just that Fergus gladly cedes him the crown, rejoicing
that he is now freed forever from the abstruse legal arbitrations which
made kingship a torment to him, and may leisurely pursue his poetical
diversions. From Ferguson's Abdication through "Fergus and the Druid"
we arrive at "W ho Goes with Fergus"—a masterpiece of condensation and
d is tilla tio n of this view of Fergus to its purest essence. What better
consolation to a poetic victim of usurpation than Yeats' Fergus?
Alas, there is yet a third "twining" in Joyce's clue to be un
raveled. For the merging of Yeats' and Ferguson's lovely visions was
preceded by Ferguson's unwitting merging of two entirely unrelated
cycles--two complete "missed understandings" on Ferguson’ s part. First,
i t was not Fergus, but Conchubar the usurper, who was to ta lly exasper
ated by the burden of a king's judicial duties. Far from being Fer
guson's b rillia n t ju r is t, Conchubar was the king who could not follow
the language of judicial argument at a ll, and in a f i t of pique out
lawed the druids' secret language of legal argument along with their
161.
right to practice law. Ferguson, in his re te llin g , somehow managed to
confuse and conflate the Ulster cycle's story of Conchubar's usurpation
of Fergus' throne with the legend of Cormac Mac Art's regaining of the
high kingship of Ireland from his usurper, Mac Con. I t was the b r il
lian t judgment of the boy Cormac--the "Irish Solomon"--that revealed to
the assembly that he was the true high-king of Ireland. P.W. Joyce re
counts fu lly the moment of revelation which Ferguson unwittingly trans
posed to Conchubar: "W hen Cormac Mac Art, the rightful heir to the
throne of Ireland, was a boy, he lived at Tara in disguise; for the
throne was held by the usurper Mac Con l"son of the wolf-dog"] so that
Cormac dared not reveal his identity." An unfortunate shepherdess,
whose sheep had strayed onto the royal domain and eaten the queen's
entire crop of woad (a plant used in dyeing), was brought to judgment
by the irate queen. The queen's husband Mac Con decides that the
sheep must be forfeited: Cormac, sitting in disguise in the judgment
hall, suddenly throws all caution to the wind:
"Not so," exclaimed the boy Cormac, who . . .
could not restrain his judicial instincts:
"the cropping of the sheep should be sufficient
for the cropping of the Iwoad]—the wool for the
woad—for both w ill grow again." "That is a
true judgment," exclaimed a ll: "and he who has
pronounced i t is surely the son of a king" —
for kings were supposed to possess a kind of
inspiration in giving their decisions. So they
discovered who Cormac was, and in a short time
placed him on the throne, after disposing of
the usurper.'8
In 'Telemachus', then, two legends, two very unlike kings, in the
162
hands of two poets, have managed to merge their twining chords with the
result that the palm is taken from Joyce's "Cormac the Magnificent" and
given, ludicrously enough, to wily Conchubar of Ulster. The denouement
of this Joycean "revenge" on Yeats comes in the finale of 'Circe!.
Bloom, bending over the fallen Stephen who is muttering "W ho Goes with
Fergus" once more, seizes on the broken lines and announces, "Ferguson,
I think I caught1 .' (p. 609).
The whole process demonstrates the extreme d iffic u lty of reviving
an ancient belief-system, and the dangers of falsifying , even for the
sake of beauty, the history of a race. In 1Lestrygonians\\ Bloom fur
ther underscores the woeful plight of the national conscience when,
repulsed in the lunch-room, his mind strays to the vision of Cormac
his grammar-school education has bequeathed:
Men, men, m en . . . A m I like that? See ourselves as
others see us . . . Don't. 0! A bone! That last
pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked
himself in Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what
he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick
converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow i t
a ll, however (p. 169).
As usual, Poldy has i t all wrong, but his education is at fa u lt, not
he. In 'Ithaca!i Stephen w ill correct his anachronism, explaining that
i t was King Leary, three hundred years la te r, who was the last pagan
king: and even here, Stephen himself doesn't have i t quite right, for
Leary did not convert either, as we have seen. What Bloom learned at
school was a distortion—a parallax view, as is Yeats' and Ferguson's
view of Fergus. The Irish for a thousand years have viewed their
163
history through the wrong eyes—seeing themselves as others see them.
In 'Nestor' we see Stephen doggedly teaching Classical history and
English poetry, terminated abruptly by the bewildering riddle of the
fox burying his grandmother: patriarchal European learning burying
Irish tradition and its true meaning.
So with "A hand plucking'the harpstrings merging their twining
chords," the presence of Cormac Mac Art enters the novel in mute—one
of the more complex examples of what Ellmann so shrewdly perceived as
19
Joyce's "virtual obsession with naming and not naming." . The presence
of Cormac Mac Art is as important to the novel as his existence was in
Joyce's mind. Joyce's appelation for his favorite—"the Magnificent"—
20
indicates his veneration of the legendary father-in-law of Finn.
And Cormac's real achievements—the restoration of national harmony by
reconstituting the pentarchate, the assembling of the chroniclers to
restore the nation's history, the revival of the disintegrating Brehon
Law, were certainly impressive enough to ju s tify his designation in
Irish history as "Cormac the Great." But i t was probably his champion
ing of poetic privilege, along with his unwavering allegiance to the
god Brigit and the female shrine at Tara,’ that drew Joyce especially to
Cormac. The fir s t important parallel is the obvious issue of usurpa
tion and establishing the true heir; but echoes of Cormac become
increasingly important as Stephen, having le ft the tower and the
theology of Mulligan behind, enters the world of history and the pre
cincts of Mr. Deasy.
164
O n the Homeric plane, Deasy, like Nestor, has l i t t l e help to offer
his young victim of usurpation. O n the Celtic level, Mr. Deasy is more
complicated. H istorically, he is descendent and symbol of usurpers
through his name, as mentioned earlier. But the Ossorian usurpation was
but one small episode in a panorama of usurpations, banishments, and
treachery during which the Clan Deisi and the Ulstermen joined forces
to rob Cormac Mac Art of his high kingship. In the midst of this com
bined struggle to disunite Ireland yet again, the Deisies managed to
put out one of Cormac's eyes, forcing him to relinquish the throne.
At the very beginning of Stephen's coming to terms with Mr. Deasy, he
proffers"two notes, one of joined halves . . ." and then, "A sovereign
f e ll, bright and new." While the epic of Cormac's long struggle to
restore his kingdom cannot be treated fu lly here, the salient factors
add a coloration to Joyce's history chapter that deserve consideration.
The principals were certainly, as Mr. Deasy intones, "all king's
sons," a ll heirs to the throne of Conn the Hundred-fighter. But only
one could be king, and when Conn's son Art, Cormac's father, became
that one, Conn's two brothers, overwhelmed with jealously, had Art
killed. Cormac's ordeal to regain his inheritance after the murder of
his father is more akin to Stephen's Hamlet aspect than his Telemachus
aspect: Cormac was beset with not one but two uncles--the more danger
ous being the founder of Clan Deisi. The threads of history begin to
draw together in Deasy's nam e and his Ulster heritage. Cormac Mac !
Art's king-name was Cormac Ul-Fada; "far from Ulster," reminder that
165
when the boy sought refuge in Ulster, the Ultonians, concealing their
league with the Deisi uncle, accepted his feast-offering, then broke
the hospitality laws and drove him out, placing their ow n usurpers
Fergus Black-tooth and then Mac Con on Cormac's throne. In a remark
that triggers his defense of his Ulster heritage Mr. Deasy says "W e
are a generous people, but we must also be just;" Stephen resists,
and counterpoints Deasy sardonically: "Glorious, pious and immortal
memory . . . Hoarse, masked and armed . . . the black north." W e note
also that Mr. Deasy keeps a collection of Stuart coins; yet more
bright sovereigns of another king Ulster helped to disinherit.
Against all odds, however, Cormac d.id regain his throne, and
banished the uncles from royal Meath. The uncle who concerns us went
into Leinster with his followers and there founded "a numerous and
powerful tribe called the Desii . . . expelled for a breach of law from
21
their d is tric t by Cormac Mac Art." And, then, in the midst of
Cormac's reign, the b itter and jealous Clan Deisi, in league now with
the rather reluctant Leinstermen, perpetrated their greatest outrage—
the destruction of B rigit's sacred shrine at Tara and the murder of the
vestals of the Beltain fire s . Nearly every word Mr. Deasy speaks in
'Nestor' is freighted with multiple historic ironies and cross-pol
linating allusions. A Polonius who speaks with the tongue of trib e
conscious Iago, Mr. Deasy speaks also with the tongue of a tribe who
more than any other "sinned against the lig h t." Not only did they
blind the high-king; the Deisies lite r a lly extinguished B rigit's
166
sacred fire .
The enormity of this act lends such resonance to Deasy's woman-
hating and the cattle issue in the history chapter that i t is worth
while to explore in fu ll the significance of B rigit's shire and the
Bel tain fire s . The trip a rtite god Brigit is yet another persona for
22
the great queen-god of the Celts; Cormac's Glossary describes her,
"This . . . is B rigit, the female sage, or wom an of wisdom - that is,
Brigit the goddess w hom poets adored, because her protecting care lover
them] was very great and very famous." In s t ill another of the myriad
metamorphoses, " . . . she had two sisters, also called Brigit: one
was the goddess of Medicine and medical doctors; the other the goddess
23
of smiths and smithwork." In sum, Brigit was the name, in Cormac's
time, of the god of Druidism, and Cormac guarded her central shrine at
Tara—ancient even to him--with ferocious zeal. While Cormac's adamant
refusal to worship any but "The One Powerful God" led scores of monkish
redactors (not to mention Poldy's teachers) to insist that Cormac was a
Christian centuries before Patrick's a rriv a l, his pronouncements and
actions, particularly his protection and promotion of druids and poets
in his laws, indicate that he was a defender of the fir s t and oldest
faith.
The shrine of B rigit and her vestals is variously described as "a
sort of College of Sacred Virgins, whose, vocation, i t appears to have
been, like the Dryads . . . to divine the future . . . " or, "a royal
foundation . . . called Cluian-Fert, or place of retirement until
167
death . . . the duty of these virgins was to keep constantly alive the
24
fires of Bel, or the Sun, and Samain, or the Moon . . . " The great
female sanctuary "Retreat Unto Death" holds a prominent place in an
cient lite ra tu re , and numerous stories recount the fate of males who
attempted to penetrate the precincts— som e killed outright, most merely
paralyzed in whatever portion of the body happened to breach the enclo
sure. In Cormac's reign, however, "the place where those holy Druid-
esses resided was attacked by the king of Leinster, and the whole of
the sacred inmates . . . most inhumanly massacred. This brutal sacri
lege the monarch punished by putting twelve of the Lagenian chiefs most
concerned in i t , to death; and exacting rigorously the Boarian tribute
25
from the province to which they belonged."
The gravity of the offense may be gauged from the summary execu
tion of twelve princes in a society which, apart from this offense,
permitted no capital punishment whatever under Cormac's own laws. In
deed, the only death penalty extant in Ireland, well into Christian
times, was imposed for tampering with the sacred fires of Bel tain, as
Patrick found out when he l i t his Pascal fire on Slane one day in ad
vance of the king's lighting of the Bel tain fires on Tara h ill.
Patrick was saved from execution only by the intercession of the chief
druid. But why were these fires so sacrosanct, and what is their
significance to Joyce's 'Nestor' episode? The exaction of the Boarian,
or cow-tribute: "Cormac obliged their successors to send th irty white
cows, with th irty calves of the same color, every year to Tara, and
168
as Frank Budgen's Making of Ulysses reminds us, Joyce could observe the
Bel tain 1;ires of the Helvetian Celts s t ill l i t each spring in the
square as Zurich while he was in residence there writing Ulysses
(p. 24).
For the moment, however, the date is June 16, 1904, somewhere be
tween the two Bel tain fire s —the pagan fire of May fir s t and the a l
tered Christian fir e on June 24th—and the young would-be heir to the
chief ollamh-ship, who in another age would have been in charge of
driving the cattle through B rigit's protecting fire s , is standing be
fore the heir of the Clan Deisi, extinguishers of B rigit's fire s , who
is proposing a single-handed fight to save the cattle. The confronta
tion is a gem of ironic historic juxtapositions. Of course Stephen will
help Deasy—even though Deasy is thereby usurping what would have been
Stephen's own office in ancient times. Again, Stephen obeys the gener
ous impulse. And Deasy, too, caught in the "ding-dong round" of his
tory, unconsciously obeys the cattle-trib ute injunction leveled against
his ancestors.
There are danger signals, however: "bullockbefriending bard" sug
gests a lowering of Stephen's status—under Cormac's law, a bard was
not accorded the rights of anollamh f ile . As P.W. Joyce explains from
the Book of Rights:
The word f i 1i . . . was applied^to the highest orders
of poets: also ofteji called eces. {probably a corrupt
form of ech or ech-belj . . . a learned m an in general
. . . a philosopher . . . there was in ancient times a
marked distinction between a f ile and a bard . . . a
169
bard was considered a mere rhymer . . . the distinction
is noticed in the Book of Rights: - (the rights and
privileges of kings) "are not known to every prattling
bard . . . i t is not the right of a bard, but the right
of the f i l i , to know each king and his right . . . A
bard is one without lawful learning but his own in te l
lect." [A bard was often simply a performer who sang
the compositions of his betters, the f i l i ] . 28
In this case, Stephen's reduction of his exalted vision of himself as
vessel of the racial conscience of Deasy's journalistic errand-boy
intrudes its e lf on his personal conscience as he considers that Buck
willannoint him with yet another derisive name-change, But "bullock-
befriending bard" has a s t ill deeper connotation; one that reaches
back historically to an epoch far beyond the era of Gormac Mac Art.
To befriend the bull is , in terms of the much older Ulster cycle, to
cross over into the yet more ancient Ulster camp--to betray the female
principle, Maeve.
The symbol of this history chapter is, after a ll, the horse, in
Joyce's schema. Under these auspices, Deasy's cattle-cure its e lf ap
pears a shade suspect: "Serum and virus. Percentage of salted hor
ses . . the cure is obtained by infecting horses with the disease—
or perhaps, in Deasy's muddled mind, even killin g the horses and mixing
the remains with the cattle's feed ("salted horse" does not sound very
promisingly like healthy inoculated survivors). But Joycean playful
ness aside, i t is noticeable that all of the Cormac era allusions in
the chapter are lite r a lly enclosed in the symbols of the older epoch:
around the walls of Deasy's study are hung a panorama of race-horses,
no:
heads meek in submission as Bloom w ill later see the mare and f i l l y in
'Oxen', each with her "meek apprehensive skull" just before "Parallax"
drives the more violent beasts over their domain (p. 414). At their
simplest, juxtaposed with the money-getting themes here, the race
horses too are emblems of reduced status: throughout Ulysses horse-
racing has fallen from an honor ritual to a money-sport (Lenehan re
marks, "Such is life in an outhouse . . . f r a ilty , thy nam e is
Sceptre.") In this 'horse-breaker's' sanctum, Joyce's choice of words
. . images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek heads
poised in a ir . . suggest a far more potent level of symbolism.
The horses of course recall Macha and a ll of the hippomorphic meta
morphoses of the elder god; the description suggestions the ultimate
subjugation of that god. The horses themselves are "vanished"—now
mere images gracing the Ulsterman's study and standing "in homage" to
the new order of things. O n the punning level, because the pictures
are hung on the study walls, we may read then as 'hanged gods,' but
more than punning is involved here: the racing horses, their speed,
and "the shouts of the vanished crowds" strongly recall Ulster's o ri
ginal sin against Macha—a suggestion reinforced in Stephen's reflec
tion on the Orange Lodges "behung with Papishes" in more recent histo
ry. Here, the horse-breaking reputation of Homer's Nestor, the great
horse-race of the Ilia d , are overshadowed by the darker implications of
that f ir s t and terrib le horse-race of the Ulster cycle.
171
In the midst of the meekly staring horses rests the mortar fille d
with sea-shells, emblems of Mananaan's lost kingdom of perfect genero
sity , both poetic and sexual. In an Irish world ruled by Maeve's and
Mananaan's powers, lovers were free to follow their inclinations, and
poets' tribute was not doled out in parsimonious driblets. Stephen
reflects momentarily that shells are a different kind of money—but
Joyce refrains from pressing the point. Deasy's woman-hating is^
stressed, however: we learn later that i t is motivated by his divorce
and bitterness over his wife's betrayal—a complete reversal of the
s p irit of Mananaan, whose shells he collects. Deasy is surrounded with
hoardings of many kinds of 'ru le '—the twelve Apostles as spoons, the
Stuarts as coins, but most prominently the remains of the two ancient
deities, reduced to mere historic collectibles. Ultimately, Deasy is
surrounded by money imagery—the power that has long replaced the
ancient communal system of the Maeve/Mananaan epoch. Deasy worships
the power of money: Stephen may well wonder "Is this old wisdom?"
The answer is 'no'— i t is the new wisdom of the new "sea's ruler":
the English shibboleth "I paid m y way."
The close of the 'Nestor' episode leaves our young would-be cham
pion almost hopelessly alone and lost. The key to the tower sur
rendered, he w ill not return to Deasy's school either, i t seems. The
last door shuts on the panorama of heroes and usurpers, false and
true: on Haines the sea's cold ruler, on Buck the Hellenizer who saved
a m an from drowning, on Deasy's heroic d istaff ancestor Blackwood--on
172
the whole nightmare of history from which Stephen cannot escape. Like
Telemachus, Stephen returns to the beach. Unlike Telemachus, he has
no goal in. mind, no ship to board, no Athena to guide him. Stephen
is not going o ff to Menelaus to hear second-hand the narrative of Pro
teus' capture. In a protean state himself, Stephen comes to the beach
to grapple in person with Proteus. Here Joyce begins to break openly
with the Homeric model, and in the 'Proteus' chapter he shifts from the
very oblique Celtic allusions that marked 'Telemachus' and 'Nestor' in
to an open counterpointing of the Odyssey with the Book of the Dun Cow.
For the second time in his personal history Stephen Dedalus,
drained of identity, comes down to the sea. In Portrait his encounter
with the sea revealed to him his true vocation: but he has not fu l
fille d the vision. Between that stupendous flood of sensual realiza
tion and the present encounter much has happened—the failu re in Paris,
his mother's death, his break with his tragically 'drowning' family,
the rout from the tower, the evaporation of his teaching position; so
he comes once more to the sea, empty, bewildered, purposeless. This
time an older, more aridly in tellectu al, and certainly more b itter and
self-deriding Stephen is not vouchsafed a magnificent sensual sjign.
N o beautiful she-bird w ill appear, though Stephen longs for her—
"Touch m e . . . I am lonely here. Touch m e soon, now. What is the
word known to all m en? . . . Touch, touch me," he appeals to the fe
male principle. But the symbolic "heavenly god" of Portrait seems to
have flown. At this turning of the tide in his lif e , all the vague
173
heroic male shades appear to accompany him—A ristotle, blind Homer,
blindfolded Columcille, fiery Columbanus, Fiacre, Scotus. He hears the
derisive laughter of Ireland's great poet-saints: he has most cer
tainly failed at the hero-game. But forces are at work about Stephen—
though very different forces than those surrounding Telemachus. As he
crunches along the shore imitating blind Homer, deliberately shutting
down one of the portals of sensory knowledge, something happens: "Rhy
thm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs march
ing. No, agallop; deline the mare. Open your eyes now. I w ill . . .
I w ill see i f I can see. See now. There a ll the time without you:
and ever shall be, world without end" (p. 37). The fascinating am
biguities of "I" and "you" in this l i t t l e passage, w riter to reader,
listener to hearer, self to self, coupled with Joyce's carefully un
derscored truncation of the song to "deline the mare," are his opening
notes of the Ulster cycle. The mare has entered. Stephen does not
see her yet—though she has been there all the time without him. The
reader w ill not see her either until the whole book has been viewed,
for she has not yet been delined by Stephen. S t ill, the admonishment
to "open your eyes" has been delivered to both character and reader:
the fragment of song has become a portent, the f ir s t indication of
what Stephen's (and the readers') task must be.
What Stephen lite r a lly sees are the midwives out for a s tro ll,
which turns his mind back to the f ir s t mortal mother, Eve, and thence
to fathers and fatherhood. As the busy mind shifts from female to male
174
principles, "airs romped around him, nipping and eager airs. They are
coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing brightwindbridled,
the steeds of Mananaan." With that, the other great deity enters.
But in contrast to Deasy's study, where both appeared as passive his
toric relics, the two deities' emblematic presentation here is very
much alive— the rhythm of the mare "agallop," the s p irit of Mananaan
"nipping," "eager," "champing," Decidedly, "This wind is sweeter" on
many levels.
However, the symbolic 'character' who holds center stage in this
episode is unquestionably Proteus himself--the ■•dog. As Joyce was com
posing this chapter, he wrote to Budgen, "Did you see the point of that
bit about the dog . . . he is the m um m er am ong beasts—the Protean
29
animal." Joyce's personal dislike and fear of dogs has been well
documented; as Ellmann reports, Joyce explained that he disliked dogs
30
"Because they have no souls." But much more than Joyce's personal
distaste for the animal went into his selection of the dog to sym
bolize Proteus (for that matter, into his remark on the soulessness of
dogs). For surely the most famous shape-shifting 'dog' in literatu re
is Cuchulain, the Hound of the Ulster cycle. In choosing his canine
Proteus, Joyce achieved his finest retribution over the Hellenizers of
his day with a sensitive, complex presentation of the Irish Achilles
in his true form. As Stephen wrestles with the dog in 'Proteus'^ so
Joyce wrestled with the Hound throughout Ulysses until he exposed him
for what he is —not a proud emblem of superman heroics, but a symbol
175
of tragically distorted manhood. In this Joyce did Cuchulain--and the
national epic--a great service. Ironically, Joyce's rendering of
Cuchulain is the most compassionate and insightful of all presentations
of the legendary figure.
From the beginning of the Revival, nearly a l l . translations of the
Ulster cycle diligently stressed Cuchulain's 'transformation' as an
epic formulation of heroic glory. Most (particularly the Germans) tied
what they translated as his "hero light" to the paternity of Lug, pre
sumptive sun-god of the Celts. Augusta Gregory's tip-toe translation
of the shape-shift best illustrates the drive (in her case under direct
orders from Hyde to create an ideal for Ireland's schoolchildren) to
create a national hero:
. . . then Cuchulain's anger came on him, and
the flames of the hero light began to shine about
his head . . . like the sparks of a fir e , and he
lost the appearance of a man, and what was on him
was the appearance of a god.31
Joyce rebukes Hyde for this pressuring of Gregory (and her version) in
'Cyclops' through the "famous old Irish red wolfdog . . . formerly . . . .
Garryown and recently rechristened O w en Garry." That is, inverted in
its meaning by the "L ittle Sweet Branch" from the "harsher and more
personal note" of the "canine original" (pp. 311-312). To scholars less
directly involved with propagandizing the heroic cause, Cuchulain's
shape-shift appears slightly,less palatable. In Eleanor Hull we find
that from Cuchulain's Riastradh, or "distortion," he is known as "the
Distorted One," and she goes on "The strong beatings of his heart
176
against his breast were as the baying of a hound in war . . . About
his head . . . the rain clouds of poison pouring forth ruddy sparks
32
of fire ." Nor, apparently, did Kuno Meyer care to cover up the
'distorted' nature of Cuchulain: in his translation the Riastradh
is "warp-.spasm," and Cuchulain is referred to by the other characters
consistently as "the Warped One," or by his father-in-law Forge! as
"the Madman." He confesses ruefully to his betrothed Emer, in obvious
reference to the warp-spasm, "I am the hero of the plague that befalls
33
dogs." Whether this suggests distemper or indicates his rabid
character in battle is not clear, but in either case, Cuchulain's
transformation cannot be ingenuously accepted as an emblem of glory.
In another ta le , the warp-spasm or battle-fury is equated with a blem
ish—which we know signaled a man's unfitness for chieftain—or king
ship:
three blemishes the wom en of Ulster assumed . . .
each who loved CuChulainn, had assumed a blindness
of her eyes in order to resemble CuChulainn; for
he, when his mind was angry . . . was accustomed to
draw in one of his eyes so far that a crane could
not reach i t in his head, and would thrust the other
out so that i t was as great as a cauldron . . . 34
Succinctly, Cuchulain's blemish was the battle warp-spasm that blinded
his reason; he fought in blind rage, as an animal. Far from a demi
god, he appeared less than a man: in Kinsella's Tain a female seer
previsions the battle for the bull:
Across the sinister chariot wheel
the Warped Man deals death
- that fa ir form I f ir s t beheld
177
melted to a mis-shape
Then a battle, in due time
man's meat everywhere
that the Warped Man can reach (pp. 66-68)
Here Cuchulain's behavior is more like the wolf's ("cu" means both wolf
and dog in Iris h ), creating a feast for the Morrigu—as he himself w ill
eventually be. The further we get from the Revival's insistence on a
national demi-god, the more suspect Cuchulain's glorious transformation
becomes. From O'Rahilly's Tain we get an indication that Cuchulain
himself was ashamed of his terrib le 'dog's plague':
Then his f ir s t distortion came upon CuCulainn so
that he became horrible, many shaped, strange and
unrecognizable . . . CuCulainn came on the morrow
. . . to display his gentle, beautiful appearance
. . . for his held not as honour or dignity the
dark form of wizardry in which he had appeared . . .
they wondered at the beautiful, gentle, appearance
. . . compared with the dark buffoon-like shape
. . . the night before (pp. 203-204).
Finally, the most naked 'un-Kiltartanized1 view of Cuchulain's warp-
spasm is Kinsella's unsparing:
The f ir s t warp-spasm seized Cuchulainn and made him
into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, un
heard of. . . His face and features became a red bowl
. . . his mouth wierdly distorted: his cheeks peeled
back from his jaws until the gullet appeared . . .his
lower jaw struck the upper a lio n -k illin g blow, and
fiery flakes as large as a ram's fleece reached his
mouth from his throat . . . the hero-halo rose out of
his brow . . . long as a snout, and he went m ad . . .
ta ll and thick . . . rose up from the dead center
178
of his skull a straight spout of black blood
darkly and magically smoking . . . (pp. 152-153).
(Stephen, remembering his own prideful dreams of poetic glory reminds
himself in 'Proteus' "Ay, very like a whale.1 1 )
The warp-spasm appears to be not Cuchulain's crowning glory, but
his tragic burden, and i t is in the tragedy of this lone warrier set
against the will of Maeve in the Tain that the profound meaning of
hum an identity and the terrib le dangers of an over-masculine role com
bine to express most vividly the s p irit and conscience of the ancient
Celts. The apex of the Tain is "The Battle at the Ford," in which
Cuchulain is incapacitated by his helpless grief after he had been
forced to k ill his own brother, Maeve's champion Ferdiad. The k illin g
of Ferdiad is a three-day ordeal in which w e witness the complete dis
integration of the rules of honorable champion-combat; and the death,
cleared of Hellenic cosmetics, is far from glorious: "The G a Bulga
. . . entered Fer Diad's body through the anus and fille d every joint
35
and limb of him with its barbs." Reproached by Ferdiad for killin g
him dishonorably, Cuchulain's te rrib le lament, "All was play, all was
sport, until Ferdiad came to the ford," expresses the mood of the epic
in a b itte r denunciation of warrior-pride. The poets who put that song
in Cuchulain's mouth would seem not the servants of a patriarchal
warrior culture, but the c ritic a l priests of the great queen-god.
In Stephen's quest for identity, the addition of a matriarchal
Celtic set of ideals to a patriarchal Greek set w ill obviously produce
17£
som e startling modifications to the concept of manhood its e lf, and what
the achieving of i t entails. How Cuchulain became the Hound of Ulster
has crucial significance for Stephen, and Joyce incorporates this as
pect of Stephen's heritage into the 'becoming' chapter, Proteus, with
b rillia n t economy and subtlety. Once again, naming and not naming
creates an elaborate web of suggestion. Buck Mulligan has already
attempted to confer two names.on Stephen: Kinch the knife-blade, which
links him to the surgical/superman motif (Stephen rejects this deri
sively with "Toothless Kinch the superman"), and the more symbolically
important "poor dogsbody." Stephen imagines yet a third name-change
from Mulligan--"bul1ockbefriending bard"--in the Nestor episode; but
i t is the epithet "dogsbody" to which his mind returns most frequently.
The allusion suggests Cuchulain, of course, but perhaps even more .
significantly suggests the intense importance of naming and/or being
named—the contrast between identity imposed and identity discovered.
The story of Cuchulain's naming begins with his own quest for
manhood, paralleling both Stephen and his Greek prototype Telemachus.
Cuchulain, or Setanta (his child-name) journeys in search of a foster-
father, however. As we know from the ancients, i t was only in manhood
that Celts associated with their real fathers: Celtic children were
not reared by their biological parents, but sent in gossipred to
others--usually the maternal uncle's house. To outward appearance, at
least, King Conchubar of Ulster is the child Setanta's uncle--just
as "nuncle Richie" is Stephen's. Unlike the fortunate Stephen ("I
have passed the way to aunt Sara's. A m I not going there? Seems
not.1 '), Setanta completes his journey to the house of his uncle, and
is accepted into fosterage. Something far uglier than a comedic paro
dy of hospitality awaits Setanta, however. Unwittingly, Setanta is ^
the living embodiment of Conchubar's incestuous g u ilt; in a further
breach of the law Setanta is now living with his biological father,
and from the outset the king represents a threat to the boy which the
child cannot apprehend. Outwardly jo v ia l, Conchubar, on his way to a
feast at the stronghold of Culann the Smith, instructs the child to
follow him there after dark, when the child has finished his hurley
practice. Culann's stronghold is guarded by the mystical ban-dog
of Ireland—a beast of such ferocity that, once loosed, i t cannot be
stopped, but k ills any and a ll comers without mercy or distinction.
Culann himself is afraid of the dog, and can control only its leashing
and unleashing. At dark, the Smith pointedly asks the king i f a ll in
his party are present and safe within, for the time has come to unleash
the dog. "Release the hound," replies the king, knowing fu ll well the
child is on his way. Setanta, armed only with a child's hurley stick
and b a ll, is set upon by the ban-dog and, without fear or hesitation,
drives the ball down the dog's huge throat with his stick, killin g the
animal instantly. Conchubar, improvising sw iftly proposes that the
boy's name be changed from Setanta to Cuchulain—lite r a lly "Hound of
Culann" or "wolf dog." W hen the boy protests that he wishes to retain
his real name— the one his mother gave him—the king c ra ftily suggests
18
that the nam e Cuchulain is destined to become the greatest warrior-
name in Ireland (only later adding that the bearer is destined to have
an unnaturally short life : Cuchulain dies at twenty-seven). The
child, his vanity inflamed, makes the fatal acquiescence to the name-
change, vowing heatedly to take the place of Culann's hound until ano
ther animal of equal ferocity can be found in Ireland. None ever is ,
for Cuchulain eventually becomes the thing its e lf. And thus the
tragedy begins. Cuchulain has symbolically exchanged his fu ll hum an
identity for the promise of warrior-glory— the area preyed upon by the
punishing Morrigu. He has become an unwitting servant-beast to the
king and, in fact, a slave to his ow n egotism and savage instincts—
which gradually distort and ravage his civilized hum an qualities: his
bestowed identity has opened the door to his warp-spasm.
Throughout most of Ulysses dogs are presented in a particularly
repugnant manner. Grandpapa Gil trap's Garryowen gets a fu ll and hi
lariously burlesqued treatment: "talking about new Ireland he ought to
get a new dog so he ought" sniffs the disapproving narrator. And per
haps a new Ireland does indeed need a new sort of dog—not the fero
cious war-spirit the Gaelic movement seems bent on calling forth. As
the novel progresses we are treated to an incessant parade of mangy
mongrels, gnawing knuckly cuds, returning with relish to their ow n
vomit, looming at Bloom out of the darkness of Nighttown, and emerging
fin a lly as the inverted deity of the Black Mass in 'Circe1. Through
out, the ferocity or vileness of the dogs in inextricably bound to
182
to their s e rv ility: as we see Buck Mulligan, for a ll his bravado,
reduced to Haines' hired dog in Stephen's eyes— "The panthersahib and
his pointer."
Stephen has barely had this vision of Buck in 'Proteus' when he
comes upon the dead dog's carcass and then, suddenly, the live Protean
dog appears: Here Joyce displays the depth of his understanding: the
dog, like Cuchulain himself, is not e v il, nor does Joyce portray him as
savage (though the potential is there). Instead, Joyce sends his Pro
tean dog through his shape-shifting performance with relish, and with
.•surprising sympathy. I t is the dog's s e rv ility , fin a lly , that is
emphasized: the issue of s e rv ility that is emphasized in Stephen's re
action to him. As the dog capers harmlessly through his changes, each
shift recalls or prefigures for the reader either an incident in the
novel or an episode in the Ulster cycle, the com m on denominator being
the varied aspect of masculine identity. Stephen's fear of the dog
augurs well for his future—once more he eludes Cuchulain's awful fate.
"Lord is he going to attack m e? Respect his lib erty. You w ill not
be master of other or their slave" (p. 45). This attitude sets
Stephen apart both from the 'superman' aspirations of a Mulligan and
from the unwitting servant-beast heroism of Cuchulain. Stephen's
avoidance of using his stick as a weapon assures its true significance
as a scribal instrument, a druid's wand. Stephen's failure to act’ the
hero does not indicate weakness, as he erroneously supposes ("he saved
m en from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping.") Rather, the
183
contrast between Cuchulain's encounter with the dog and Stephen's em
phasizes Stephen's fu ll complement of hum an qualities, including fear,
thoughtfulness, and sympathy—and his healthy unwillingness to have an
identity thrust upon him.
Even before the dog appears, we see Stephen, like Proteus himself,
toying with som e of the shapes he might assume—dismissing two roles
that have traditionally represented Irish manhood in the modern world:
the revolutionary and the mercenary soldier. Kevin Egan has tried to
persuade Stephen to take on a Cuchulain character (perhaps even the
Ulster bull's character: "To yoke m e his yokefellow, our crimes our
com m on cause). But both Patrice with his bunny face and Kevin with his
Spanish tassels present fruitless and ultimately falsely heroic ways to
represent Ireland, and their misguided employment of manhood shades in
to the suggestion of unsatisfactory adjustment to basic maleness as
well. Though Kevin teaches Pat the lusty song "The Boys of Kilkenny,"
Kevin's wife is "nicey comfey without her outcastman," and father and
son appear permanently separated. Yet while showing heroics "a damned
lie ," Joyce allows a shade of sympathy with the old Fenian: "Weak,
wasting,hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them."
S t i l l , Kevin's lif e is ending in f u t ili t y —i t has born no fr u it save
the pathetic lapin, Patrice. Heroics have wasted his l if e , lost him
his son.
The question of satisfactory adjustment to basic maleness brings
us to a deeper level of the 'Proteus' chapter— the psychological aspect
184,
of Stephen's quest, not only for a worldly identity, but for a father-
confrontation in the Freudian sense. Here, two actions of the Pro-
teus/Cuchulain dog awaken echoes of the Ulster cycle once more: the
dog's servile obedience to his master— "The man's shrieked whistle
struck his limp ears," and the confrontation with a carcass of his own
kind. For Cuchulain evolved from Setanta, the boy in search of a
father, into Cuchulain the father who, confronting his own son Conn!a
on his father-quest, killed the boy outright in blind obedience to
Conchubar's command.
"The Tragic Death of Conn!a" provides the Ulster cycle with a
kind of Aristotelian recognition in which the awful meaning of his
name-change and vow come hom e to Cuchulain. In the tale, Cuchulain's
true position is revealed as the actual, not figurative, ban-dog to
Conchubar; and his ferocity, unlike Achilles’ is frankly delineated
as sub-human and equated with canine degradation. The scene of Connla's
death is on the beach, and Stephen's reaction to the dog on this level
appears classically Oedipal. After raping Aife, Cuchulain instructs
her to send the boy to him when he is grown: he places two taboos on
the unborn child—he must never refuse battle, and he must never reveal
his name. In due course Connla arrives and is prevented from landing
his boat by the Ulstermen because he w ill not reveal his identity.
Connla is in every way his father's son; terrifying in warrior-pro-
wess, defiant, and hot-headed. Frightened, King Conchubar sends for
185
Cuchulain to dispatch the intruder at once for the honor of Ulster.
Once again, the crucial importance of 'reading signatures'i of recog
nizing the true essence of the thing observed--themes which dominate
'Proteus', are elaborated in the ancient poetry: as Cuchulain pre
pares to ju s tify his reputation on the beach, his wife Emer pleads with
him to stop and consider— "Don't go down! . . . turn/from this flesh
agony . . . M y restraint is reason/Cuchulain hear it/we know his name/
of:
i f he is really Connla." In an Irish legend, failure to heed a wo
man's counsel is a sure prelude to disaster, as reason was one of
the deity's chief attributes, and counseling a chief duty of wives.
Cuchulain, concerned only with his own image before the Ulsterman,
pushes his wife aside with " It is n 't a woman/that I need now/to hold
m e back . . . I wantno womanl s/help ,with m y work/victorious deeds/are
what we need . . . N o matter who he is , wife . . .1 must k ill him for
the honor of Ulster."
Stephen Dedalus' own refusal to be counseled by a woman, his
mother, is obviously one of the guilts he must resolve before he can
assume his mature identity. Stephen is an Irish Hamlet—haunted by the
ghost of a 'wronged' mother: unlike the Dane, who is being asked to
take up his manhood and birthright in the fam iliar patriarchal manner—
killin g and avenging—the actions Stephen must make or avoid in a t
taining fu ll manhood are far more subtle and complex than the Dane's.
And vastly more complex than Telemachus' solution, which is simply to
find one's father and let that father fight to secure one's birthright.
186
Here on the beach, what hopeful news of a saving father can be expected
from a Proteus who is Cuchulain? O n the psychological leyel, the per
vading presence of the Cuchulain myth prevents us at every turn from
making the standard patriarchal assumptions of what Stephen's choices
should be.
Cuchulain himself is beyond choices—he has only animal instincts
le ft. At the king's command, he wades out to meet Connla, and though
one of his special attributes is the a b ility to walk on water and fight
superbly in i t , Connla,is so much his father's son that he nearly suc
ceeds in drowning the Ulster Achilles. Mortified, Cuchulain resorts to
the gae bulgae and disembowels Connla, only to discover he has killed
his only son.
Realizing what he has done and become, Cuchulain goes m ad and
attacks the sea its e lf—the steeds of Mananaan—with his sword. The
universally amusing spectacle of a dog's fu tile challenge to the sea's
waves, transmuted into the actions of a great champion who has just
killed his son, illustrates that fusion of sorrow, repugnance, and wry
humor which is the essence of the Celtic tradition: a balance between
sympathy and criticism , between tragedy and satire, which Joyce sus- ' : ■
tains masterfully throughout. Stephen's meeting with the sea. Though
Yeats' mastery transformed Cuchulain's attack on the waves to romantic
grandeur in O n Baile'- Strand, Joyce and his Protean dog are nearer the
mark: Cuchulain's actions in the original legend expose the subsuma-
tion of his hum an qualities by those of a servant-beast. At this
137
point, the presence of the dog with his Homeric Proteus associations
may tempt us to force the meaning of the chapter into the fam iliar
Freudian mode: attaining manhood means confronting and fin a lly super
seding a:father— "Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on ground, moves to one
great goal" indicates that Stephen, like Telemachus, must brave the
menace of the sea and press on to a father-confrontation, a male right
of passage. Confoundingly, the Celtic myth contradicts the most basic
of patriarchal archetypes: Cuchulain’s and Connla1s superb a b ility in
water does not save thou from tragedy: moreover, the actions of both
result in total reyersal of the natural order of succession.
Momentarily, the issue of confrontation is avoided, as the dog
retreats without noticing Stephen, blending for an instant into a
reminder of the usurping Cel tophi le Haines— "panther . . . vulturing
the dead," which leads Stephen's shifting mind into an unconscious pro
phecy of later events in the novel its e lf: ". . . same dream . . .
Street of harlots . . . Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting i t . That
m an led me, spoke. I was not afraid." The Haroun al Raschid reference
is not only meant for an indication of Bloom's exotic origins, but as
pointedly as a reminder of P.W. Joyce's observation, "The old Shena-
chies wove their fictions around Concobar Mac Nessa and his Red Branch
Knights . . . or Cormac Mac Art; like . . . the Arabian Romances of
37
Haroun al Raschid." Stephen is "almosting it" here—he's almost
going through the prophetic bull-dream ritual of his Druid forerunners.
James Joyce is more than "almosting it" : he is^weaving his fiction
188
around the Red Branch Knights (Cuchulain:particularly) and toying with
our a b ility to recognize the rapidly shifting allusions—to the Hound,
to Connla, to Druidic dream-ritual, exactly as the ancient poets did in
the cycles. This riddling style of multiple symbols, hidden allusions
meant only for 'in itia te s ', dream fragments interjected into narrative,
are as m uch a part of ancient technique as they are modern stream-of-
consciousness style. To name Haroun al Raschid is to challenge a
reader like Magee to remember P.W. Joyce's remarks—because the pro
phetic dream, for Stephen, w ill have more to do with Cormac when i t
comes alive in Circe and Ithaca; where Bloom w ill become "that man,"
Mananaan, luring Cormac to the precincts of poetic truth. Here in
'Proteus' the reference is the briefest of foreshadowings: Joyce meant
for the self-styled 'in itia te s '—the Revivalists—to work as seriously
at the secret signals as he himself did: unfortunately, most of that
audience reacted with the same exasperation as Conchubar. Nonetheless,
as Stephen struggles to decipher the signature of all things, Joyce
a rtfu lly puts the readers to the same test, as a druid master would.
W e scarcely have time to absorb the clue when the tide of the chapter
shifts back to the female principle, as Stephen is confronted with a
fresh array of juxtapositions.
The cocklepicker's wom an blends into all of the down-grading of
the female symbol. She has been reduced to follower— "Behind her lord
his helpmate, bing awast, to Romevine." Matriarchy subsumed by pa
triarchy, distorted ultimately to the horrible harlot, the words also
189
allude to Ireland, "behind her lord" in both the religious and p o liti
cal sense. The religious distortion of wom an gets particular attention
here, as Stephen asserts mentally that the .earthy 1anguage of the Re
naissance poets' celebration of sex is every b it as good--if not bet
te r—than the "monkwords, marybeads" of the Church's Marion idolatry.
The symbolic couple, in their symbolic order, pass Stephen, and accor
dingly, his mind passes to an apostrophe of the female principle—
"Across the sands of all the world, followed by the suns flaming sword,
to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains,
drags, trascines her load." This is the earth herself; but woman, too,
carrying the burden of patriarchy out of the east and into the farthest
west—Eve denounced. The multiple languages here put the signature of
universal enslavement on her. The female principle merges with the sea
and in this mingling of sun and m oon facets, fa in tly echoes B rigit
herself, a clue Stephen's mind misses as his mother-guilt overtakes
him once more: " . . . death, ghostcandled . . . He comes, pale vam
pire." This is the god Stephen hates—the "chewer of corpses," and
Stephen's anger and desire for revenge find expression here on several
levels. Stephen is angry that this god took his mother, that Ireland
has been swallowed up by the forces of patriarchy, and, on Joyce's
level of understanding, that the old god has been devoured by the new.
Stephen is coming ever closer to Joyce's understanding, however:
ie recognizes that the soul is female--"a wom an to her lover clinging,
the more the more," as Macha once came to mankind in Ulster. Stephen's
190
longing for the female who this time w ill not appear on the shore is a
religious stirring: like Bloom, he "mutely craves to adore." There
is a wonderful difference in sameness between Bloom's mind and !
Stephen's begun in this chapter. "I am lonely here . . .Sad too," are
sentiments almost exactly echoed by Bloom in 'Sirens!. Both characters
represent m an longing for the completion or guidance or power of woman.
But Bloom already knows the word--yes: he already has Molly. Stephen,
while far less "mute" than Bloom, is s t ill waiting for that contact—
"And m y turn? When?" Stephen is not yet capable of rendering his
'female' soul in the "ineluctable modality" of the visible—as the
oscillating male and female symbolism of the 'Proteus' episode, as seen
though his eyes, demonstrates. Nevertheless, his forebearance in in
teraction with the dog is an important decision in the preservation of
that soul, as is his ultimate derisive rejection of the nam e "Kinch."
Though confused, and sometimes misreading the signatures before him, he
has avoided the f ir s t temptation of the Hound. Stephen recognizes his
connection to the dogs through "poor dogsbody," but he has not joined
them: he has not bartered that soul for a heroic posture. Most im
portantly, unlike the dog and the Hound of Ulster who looms behind him
in this scene, Stephen has retained the possibility of deciphering the
"herds of seamorse": though his anger at the vampire god sometimes
distorts his perceptions, he has not given over to the brute helpless
ness of the dog, who can only bark ineffectually at the sea's mysteri
ous message.
191
As Stephen mirrors the dog Proteus, urinating in the sea—adding
his "foreworded Wavespeech," he remembers Mananaan once more, "rearing
horses" blending male and.female imagery as he regards the tidepool.
He thinks of the seaweed as wom en "lifte d , flooded, and le t f a ll. Lord
they are weary:" yet out of what he regards as the apparent meaning
lessness of the sea's lif e , of all l if e , he at last glimpses, very
b rie fly , what the sea might reveal to him i f he could properly under
stand its lesson— ". . . a naked woman, shining in her courts, she
draws a to il of water," Stephen is s t ill "almosting it" in terms of
putting his god into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visu-
a lity : almost realizing that even the sea obeys the powers of the
female principle. But not quite yet. He s t ill misunderstands a good
deal: the sea is not purposeless. Stephen s t ill has a long way to go
to find "that word known to all men."
Accordingly, his mind shifts once more from the "shining courts"
of the sea to what he fears in it : he remembers the drowned m an and
the immense power of the sea. Yet Stephen's fear of water, unlike his
fear of the dog, is something he must definitely overcome, as water is
on all levels of Joyce's novel a symbol for lif e its e lf. Stephen,
an Irish Hamlet as well as an Irish Telemachus, must find an alterna
tive mode to relate to water, the sea, and the male principle. Within
the context Joyce has created, attacking the 'sea's cold ruler' Haines,
the usurper in the tower, is as fu tile as the dog's attack on the
waves; while "El si nor's tempting flood" is an adolescent melodramatic
192
trap that even Stephen dismisses as theatrical. Oddly enough, the
drowned m an himself points the clue—he brings Stephen to the recogni
tion he has failed to make since his arrival on the strand— "Old
Father Ocean." At last Stephen has rid himself of at least one of the
"Buck's castoffs": the idea that the sea is "our mighty mother." N ow
Stephen stands squarely before the thing its e lf—he confronts L ir,
the primal father. And though Proteus himself has gone prancing out
of the scene, a real recognition has begun, after a ll.
"A sea-change this . . . Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to
man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of imitations. Just
you give i t a fa ir t r ia l. W e enjoyed ourselves immensely" (p. 50).
Now Stephen is almost recognizing Mananaan, realizing his true nature:
but Joyce is as yet preserving a Druid silence—waiting for the reader
to make the comparison between Mananaan and Poseidon; to give fa ir
tria l between the Celtic ruler of the sea and the Greek. Mananaan
Mac Lir is the Irish equivalent of Poseidon, and in Ulysses he provides
the Celtic counterpoint to the Greek god of earthquake who implacably
punishes throughout the Homeric epic. In the Ulster cycle Mananaan is
the symbolic alternative to the unmixed and destructive masculinity
Cuchulain represents. Cuchulain's rage against the sea would be met,
one supposes, with som e dire retaliation from the sea god—but in that
episode the waves passively allow Cuchulain to expend his g u ilt and
g rief. For Mananaan is the male god of a culture with quite different
standards of masculine perfection than mere power and avenging pride.
193
Mananaan is not "earth-shaker," but the giver of the "cup of truth-
discerning" and the "singing branch" or harp, to the Celtic race.
Mananaan presides over that happy other world—Mag Mel, the "flowery
plain," and everyone who goes to him does enjoy themselves immensely.
He is indeed the mildest of all the sea-rulers of mythology.
Celtic myth provides many journeys to Mananaan's kingdom--Bran's,
Ossian's, the son of Conn's: but the two truly significant ones are
Cuchulain's in the Ulster cycle and Cormac's in the King's cycle. Both
of these are crucial to Joyce's novel, and in 'Proteus' i t is Cuchu
lain's sojourn with the Strange Son of Ocean which commands our atten
tion. Cuchulain is summ oned to Mananaan's kingdom by two magical wo-
man-birds—emissaries of Mananaan's wife Fann, who feels she has been
neglected by the sea-god. Cuchulain and Fann immediately began an
a ffa ir, but the lordly Mananaan makes no attempt to interfere with his
wife's choice, or to challenge Cuchulain. Fann's activities in no way
diminish his position and moreover, Fann, as a Celtic female, is not
Mananaan's subordinate. The humiliation of being rejected by an 'in
fe rio r' or of having one's 'possession* possessed by another—the
fam iliar patriarchal pattern of cuckoldry and shame--simply does not
exist for this pair. The "revenge of Mananaan" recalled by Haines in
'Oxen' is but another missed understanding: he takes no revenge at
a ll; for Mananaan is the embodiment of the challenging ideal of man
hood envisioned by a Celtic matriarchy. To our own patriarchally-con-
ditioned responses i t may not seem 'natural' for Mananaan to relinquish
194
his wife with regal calm: but then, i t is not Hamlet's 'natural' in
stinct to k ill Claudius, either; and i t is perhaps unnatural for
Odysseus to k ill all the suitors ( i t is at least rather unreasonable).
And i t is certainly repellent for young Telemachus to dispatch the
p itifu l maids "like birds in a snare" at the close of the Odyssey, a
denouement which Joyce found distasteful in the extreme. The puri
fication of the palace of Ithaca would be an incomprehensible act to
the ancient Celtic mind—the attack of the bird-like girls an om en of
evi 1.
In the Celtic legend, Mananaan at no time breaks the law of hos
p ita lity ; he remains true to the f ir s t commandment of generosity and,
what is harder, s tric tly obeys the great queen-god's interdiction of
jealously. He refrains from jealousy even when Cuchulain and Fann
leave his kingdom and return to Ulster. Upon the return to Ulster,
however, Cuchulain fa lls into a death-like trance, and i t is obvious
that so long as he is under the influence of Fann's world, he cannot
live normally on land. At that, Cuchulain's mortal wife Emer, for the
f ir s t and only time in her lif e , does break the Celtic edict against
jealousy. (The deep seriousness with which the Celts regarded jealousy
is reflected in the titlin g of this episode as "The Only Jealousy of
Emer.") Armed with long knives, Emer brings all the wom en of Ulster
down to the beach to fight Fann for Cuchulain's mortal lif e . "Those
lovely seaside girls" in this context are anything but toy-like amuse
ments: Emer's determination is so fierce, his eloquence so great, that
195
Fann is gradually forced to yield: but the spell remains unbroken, and
while Emer has Cuchulain's body, his s p irit is s t ill with Fann—who can
neither snatch him from the armed wom en nor bear to leave him thus.
But then the radiant goodness of Mananaan intervenes, and the
final scene is a beautiful evocation of the Celtic ideal of manhood.
Perceiving Fann is overmatched, Mananaan comes for her in his great
chariot. Invisible to everyone but his wife, he quietly asks her to
make her choice, knowing that she has none, but respectful of her dig
nity. The irreducible nobility of Mananaan, his bravely undisguised
loneliness and love for Fann, and his magnificent capacity for genero
sity even in sorrow, indicate to us the ideal of manhood and love to
which the ancient Irish aspired. Fann's reaction to Mananaan's appear
ance, her supernatural capacity to empathize with the sea-god, is told
39
in her song of realization beginning "Behold the valiant son of Lir."
What the song expresses of the freedom, honesty, and undeceived ap
preciation between these two immortal equals is a beautiful lesson in
the values and rea litie s of mature love. The song ends with "I shall
go with m y husband/Because he will show m e no disobedience." Fann
does not mean that she will dominate the sea-god--but rather that he
is so serene in hismanly goodness that gestures of assertion and pos
session are superfluous to him. The song emphasizes the contrast she
now perceives between the flawed Cuchulain and the perfect son of Lir.
Finally, Mananaan graciously draws his cloak of in v is ib ility between
Fann and Cuchulain, the immortal pair ride into the sea, and Cuchulain
196
reawakens to the mortal world. Symbolically, Cuchulain has been re
born through the loving generosity of Mananaan--but he apparently j
learns nothing from his sojourn in the sea. He fa ils , like Joyce's
Protean dog, to decode the "seamorse," and continues his violent
career until he, like the second dog in ‘Proteus,1 ends as carrion.
As Stephen stands before the Irish Sea, the question of the 'Pro
teus' chapter, of the novel it s e lf , in fa ct, is whether he w ill some
how decipher the lesson this symbol of the male principle has to teach.
Psychologically, Stephen has made a tentative step forward (though he
yet avoids the waves). He has begun to perceive, albeit dimly, that
the male principle might have some other nature than that of competi
tion, danger, treachery. But he is s t ill far from complete recognition,
as his attitude in 'Aeolus', and particularly in the library, display.
In both of these episodes, Stephen is shown s t ill laboring under the
classic Freudian patriarchal pattern: in the male arena, the element
of jealous combativeness, though in tellectu al, is very much to the fore.
I t is heavily underscored in the National Library, where the male pres
sure to conform to the dictates of a heroic nationalism make George
Moore the chief contender for the role of Ollamh Fodhla, much to
Stephen's chagrin; and where the heavy seal of a patriarchalized Ire
land is stamped on the solemn i f ineffectual bachelor clan that gathers
there: A.E., the Yogibogeybox ollav, Eglinton, Best, Mulligan, and
even Lyster are a ll ready and eager to denounce the female—from
Xantippe to Anne Hathaway to Aphrodite.
197
Cuchulain-1ike, Stephen's embattled presentation ("unsheath your
dagger definitions") of the Shakespeare theory reveals more of the
young man's psychological torment than his a rtis tic philosophy. The
Shakespeare theory begins promisingly enough with a defense of Anne
Hathaway as the primal source of a rt, but soon degenerates into a ma
triarchal/patriarchal pastiche that Stephen can scarcely control. Al
though he maintains an impervious a ir of superiority to these men, his
'asides' during the argument reveal a mind fragmented by doubt and en
vy, by antagonism and anguish—darting from VA.E.I.O.U." to the admis
sion "Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile" and "Said that;"
shifting from "Mother's deathbed" to "Hast thou found me, 0 mine ene
my?" He is, in fact, steering a desperate course between the Scylla
and Charybdis of his own psyche—mother-guiIt and father resentment.
Anne Hathaway's death-portrait fuses with his mother's (p. 190).
Anne's seduction of Shakespeare with his own longing for a woman's
love— "And m y turn? When?" But most strongly, Stephen's dogged and
exhausted argument that the a rtis t is father to himself grows out of
the despair inherent in his own emotional situation: "A father,
Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary evil . . .
W ho is father of any son that any son should love him or he any .
son . . . I know . . . I have reasons" (p. 207, emphasis mine). As
the theory whirls on, Stephen's personal bitterness against Simon,
against a patriarchal Church cunningly u tilizin g "Amor Matris" while
condemning and distorting sexuality, against the clubby Irish 'man's
198
world' that has beggared him and yet demands heroic feats—a ll of
Stephen's private anguish pulsates vividly through the Shakespeare
alter-ego he is manufacturing— "The note of banishment . . . from the
heart . . . from hom e . . . sounds uninterrupted." As Stephen laughs
"to free his mind from his mind's bondage" Eglinton sum s up "He is all
in a ll." "He is , Stephen said." This is a very neat trick to free the
psyche from the necessity of dealing with a father, from the pain of
needing a father's love. But i t won't work. While Stephen enjoys
twitting "the new Viennese shoo!" of Freud and the Oedipal complex,
he knows that he cannot be his own father, that he cannot be his own
male rite of passage, fin a lly , that he cannot save his 'mother' alone.
Stephen has been aware from the start that his performance is d eli
berately rehtorical— "Local colour. Work in a ll you know. Make them
accomplices . . . Composition of place." W hen asked at last i f he
believes his own theory, the answer comes definitely and immediately—
"no." The truth of the matter has already been revealed at the be
ginning of the argument, when the young poet, facing his older con
tenders, unconsciously invokes aid: "Flow over them with your waves
and with your waters, Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir." This is an honest
cry for help--and precisely to the correct quarter.
In 'Proteus' Joyce is using Mananaan to suggest psychological and
philosophical changes which Stephen w ill have to undergo i f his
manhood is to be spent as spokesman for his race. Most importantly,
Stephen w ill have to rid himself of his jealous resentments, reject his
199
f
arrogant aggressive intellectual postures, i f he is to follow in the
footsteps of Columcille and the even more ancient druid bridegrooms of
Ireland. The process of replacing aggression with receptivity is cru
cial to a poet—especially one who aspires to represent Kathleen ni
Houlihan and the female principle that stands behind her, whether w e
name i t Epona or B rigit or Macha or Maeve. Stephen must learn that
such a relationship is a love relationship, not born out of pride and
possession. In Celtic terms, for Ireland to belong to Stephen he must
"cease to strive" for possession; he must learn the "peace of the
druids'.':'(p. 218). The choice w ill be hers: for a poet seeking to be
an ollamh, marriage--to the nation, the race, the god, means under
standing, appreciating, and continually affirming that which is actual,
without falsely romanticizing, glorifying, or reshaping the object of
love; for any attempt to remake i t in one's own image results in the
loss of the thing its e lf— in irremedial s te r ility , a rtis tic solipsism.
And that, as Joyce's own art demonstrated, is the whole duty of poets
which Stephen must learn.
O n the psychological level of 'Proteus', then, Stephen must find a
father-model somewhat different from the range of father-figures
offered by patriarchy. A father-model who w ill neither contest with
him nor teach him how to contest for himself, but rather, teach him,
in the style of a Druid master, what he needs to learn of submission
in the poetic sense. As the chapter of 'becoming' draws to a close,
the integration of its fourteen pages of contrapuntal symbolism attains
200
perfection, not only in philosophical insight, but in the subtly pun
ning quality of its conclusions—that essential Celtic s p irit which is
for Joyce the emblem of his a rtis tic heritage. As Stephen is Irish ,
not Greek, he must find a foster-father. I f he is to avoid the fate
of Cuchulain he must find a father not of his blood, as Conchubar was
of Cuchulain's blood. As Stephen is Celtic, a son of the Mare, he must
find a father who f u lf ills her c rite ria for a husband: a m an who lives
through acceptance, and who aspires to the three commandments which
Mananaan ideally attained—generosity, courage, and complete absence
of jealousy. And with a ll this in mind, we turn the page and meet
Mr. Leopold Bloom.
201
Notes
1 M y Brother's Keeper, p. 107.
2 P.W. Joyce, p. 222.
3
op. c i t . , p. 171.
4 O'Curry, pp. 2-3.
r
David Greene, Golden Treasury, p. 106.
6 P.W. Joyce, pp. 449-450.
7 David Greene, Anthology, p. 10.
O
u For a concise view of the early Irish clerics, see David
Greene's introductions to both the Golden Treasury and Anthology. A
brief but useful account of the capitulation to Rom e during the Norman
invasion can be found in Kenneth Jackson, A Celtic Miscellany (London:
Penguin, 1971), p. 277.
^ O'Curry, p. 74.
^ Social History, p. 391.
Douglas Hyde, Literary History of Ireland, p. 92.
12 Greene, Anthology, p. 14.
13 P.W. Joyce, p. 13.
202
14 Greene, Anthology, p. 282.
15
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evi1, as reproduced in
The European Philsophers from Descartes to Nietzsche, trans. Helen
Zimmerman, ed. Monroe Beardsley (New York: Modern Library, 1960),
p. 832.
^ Kinsella, p. 55.
17 Greene, Anthology, pp. 348-354.
18 P.W. Joyce, p. 216.
19
ElTmarin, Consciousness of James Joyce, p. 13.
on
C ritical Writings, p. 178.
21 P.W. Joyce, p. 74.
??
Jubainville, p. 83.
23 P.W. Joyce, pp. 260-261.
24 Keating, pp. 331,356.
25
O'Mahoney's footnote to Keating, History, p. 336.
28 Loc. c it.
27 Op. c i t . , p. 300.
28 P.W. Joyce, pp. 448-449.
oq
Budgen, Making of Ulysses, p. 53.
on
Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 743.
qi
Augusta Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, p. 184.
32 Eleanor Hull, A Text Book of Irish Literature (Dublin:
M.H. Gill & Son, 1906), p. 58.
203
oo
Cross and Slover, Ancient Irish Tales, p. 161.
3^ Op. c i t . , p. 178.
35 O'Rahilly, p. 229.
38 Kinsella, p. 43.
3^ Social History, p. 538.
38 Cross and SI over, p. 503.
39 Op. c i t . , p. 196.
204
Chapter IV
Odysseus, E lijah, Mananaan:
Heroism, G uilt, and Ambuiguity
in the Male Principle
Poor Leopold Bloom, much maligned by the Dubliners around him for
what they perceive as his lack of v i r i l i t y , was equally maligned by
early critics of Joyce for his failure to meet their c rite ria for an
effective Odysseus: "Ulysses himself is Mr. Leopold Bloom—a converted
Jew—greedy, lascivious, timid, undignified, desultory, superficial,
kindly, and always at his lowest when he pretends to aspire."1
Repeatedly, Bloom as character has been attacked for being a
tedious petit-bourgeois; for unorthodox sexual proclivities; for
avoiding confrontation with Boylan; for failin g to put Molly in her
place. In truth, Bloom irrita te d early readers of Joyce for failin g
in every way to display the fam iliar qualities of a traditional l i t e r
ary hero. Subsequent c ritic s , once time had worn away the shock, have
tended to be more insightful and forgiving of Bloom. Darcy O'Brien,
it 's true, s t ill sees Bloom as "a weak l i t t l e man, driven by his
2
uncontrolled lust to degrade himself in the most comical fashion,"
205
while in Surface and Symbol Robert Adam s finds Bloom's Jewishness an
inauthentic mask for Joyce's personal s e lf-p ity , citing that Leopold
has no Jewish sense of humor and fa ils to identify with his fellow-Jews.
But this is to read Leopold as Forster did. Bloom's "lust" is nearly
to ta lly sublimated into fantasies throughout—and is in any case a pale
shadow beside Boylan's. And Bloom is , after a ll , only half Jewish—his
mother is Ellen Higgins, an Irish Catholic. Bloom is precisely what he
claims—an Irishman, whether the clannish Dubliners w ill accept that
or no. His sense of humor—and he is well endowed with one—is uni
versal. He can appreciate Simon's thrust at Dodd, Dollard's absurd
appearance in the undersized borrowed pants, even the tram-driver's
surly joke at his own expense in nighttown. I f Bloom fa ils to 'id e n ti
fy' with Reuben Dodd S r., one can scarcely imagine any m an of good
w ill, Jewish or otherwise, empathizing with that grasping, cold-
hearted father. Contemporary critics are coming closer to accepting
3
Joyce's own view of Bloom: "a good man," "a complete man:" most
surely, a universal man, whose qualities of gentleness, kindness, and
selflessness compensate for his lack of the more traditional accoutre
ments of a fictional hero. Yet even now, sympathetic critics s t ill
search w istfully for some sign—even outside the confines of the
text—that Joyce w ill allow Bloom to be reinvested with the stature
of Western litera tu re 's traditional male hero and restore him to
assertiveness and breakfast in bed on June 17.^ In som e sense, then,
though Joyce has brought us a long way toward understanding his point
206
of view since Forster's irrita te d outburst, Leopold Bloom s t ill disap
points our traditional sense of an ending. But before we go beyond
the text to satisfy our lite ra ry expectations, i t is useful to examine
Bloom in the context of a less fam iliar lite ra ry tradition--the Celtic--
embedded in that text. I f Bloom is not consistently the more glamorous
embodiment of The Wandering Jew, or Elijah, or Christ himself—nor in
any sense the traditional Odysseus, he is , by fits and starts, a ll of
those more "fittin g " personae that the definition "central character"
evokes in the reader's expectations: moreover, he is most consistently
the embodiment of a central character with which most Western readers
are not closely familial— Mananaan Mac L ir—and this addition by Joyce
most probably accounts for our frustration as readers and c ritic s .
I f , at the end of 'Proteus', Stephen is s t ill a somewhat un
promising hydrophobe (the connotation heightened by juxtaposition with
the canine associations), Bloom is Stephen's opposite number, a
hydrophile. "Bloom waterlover" is one of Joyce's most perfectly rea
lized fictional permutations, in which the opposite ends of the Hebraic
and Celtic visions meet and synthesize. Bloom, whose Semitic origins
are the arid Middle East deserts, toys only briefly with Moses
Montefiorels exotic fictions of a reborn Holy Land, discovered
comically enough in the pork butcher's. The dream of melons and olives
is dismissed tersely; "Nothing doing," while to the alluring ad he
juxtaposes "No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste . . . the
dead sea: no fish . . . no wind would l i f t those waves, grey metal,
207
poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called i t raining down . . .
N ow i t could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken
cunt of the world. Desolation" (pp. 60-61). As with our introductory
view of Stephen, we find that Bloom, too, is haunted by a metaphoric
vision of mother-death: Bloom, however, is equipped to deal with i t
as Stephen is not. "Grey horror seared his flesh . . . age crusting
him with a salt cloak," but "Well, I'm here now." Born in Ireland,
where the sea is not dead, where, in answer to the "watering cart.
To provoke the rain," "A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly
wholly." Pragmatic Bloom has relinquished his 'lost kingdom' in favor
of an adopted land. Certainly he has not forgotten his racial tie s —we
see that clearly in 'Cyclops' and 'Ithaca'. But he has no chauvinist
illusions: in contrast to his a ll-to o -Iris h antagonist the citizen,
Bloom has no interest in recapturing the Holy Land; he is no Zionist.
Joyce utilizes this attitude metaphorically to make a silent comparison.
Compelled by Diaspora to wander the earth, thus relieved of a perpetual
warrior-stance to defend te rrito ria l identity, the Jews display univer
sal cultural fru ition ; quite unlike the Irish curdling in their insu
la rity and war-like bitterness to retake their real-estate. Throughout
Ulysses we are reminded of a host of great Jews—philosophers, compo
sers, writers who, ironically free in exile, added immeasurably more
to the world's culture than they might have done locked in a constant
warrior-defense of mere land. It is the Virags' increasing distance
from their origins, after a l l, that has lite r a lly made Leopold "Bloom."
208
In apposition to the a rid ity of his lost racial kingdom, Bloom is
consistently identified with water, creatures of the water, and the
sea. His boyhood nickname was "mackerel," he has "cod's eyes," and in
'Sirens' he is yoked to the "last sardine of summer." In its comic
aspect, during the course of the great voyage upon which Joyce has
launched him, Bloom appears the proverbial fish out of water both in
the Dublin milieu and in the character of Odysseus. His salt-encrusted
apparition in 'Calypso' may duplicate that of Odysseus in Nausicaa,
but Bloom is in rea lity a land-lubber who can barely manage a row
boat adequately. While Odysseus strove sing!e-mindedly to arrive home,
Bloom, like Stephen in P o rtrait, dreams of sea-voyages and longs for
exotic places. Where Odysseus longed to be quit of the sea, Bloom
contrarily appears drawn to i t —almost to be of i t , in his aquatic
associations - " . . . I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine" (of
Menton, p. 115). Indeed, W.B. Murphy of 'Eumaeus!, who is tired of
all those rocks in the sea and a ll that salt junk, seems a more apt
figuration of Odysseus than Bloom.
But while Joyce's Bloom is a paradoxical character, he is not a l
together a parodic one. Bloom's aquatic'' tags' and inversions may
seem to diminish the naturalistic modern man in contrast to the
Homeric past, but Bloom's contrapuntal Celtic identity as Mananaan
more than compensates by adding unsuspected depths and meanings to the
fam iliar configurations of Homer's epic. Stephen's additional Celtic
symbol-cluster is relatively easy to grasp (which is probably why Joyce
209
commented to Budgen, "Stephen no longer interests m e to the same extent.
He has a shape that can't be changed."} Stephen's permutations run
the gamut of Telemachus, Hamlet, Cormac Mac Art, would-be oll.amh f ile .
As a fledgling poet in quest of a mentor to in itia te him, his dimen
sions are, even on their Celtic level, more universally fam iliar than
the older character whose Celtic 'goal' is far less formulaic as a
lite ra ry type. I f early critics thought i t an absurdity to pose the
nonentity Bloom as Odysseus, how much more audacious to propose the
bumbling l i t t l e m an as Mananaan Mac Lir. Yet Joyce does so— in very
controlled increments and with such subtle and delicate attuning of
emblems and characteristics as to leave no doubt but that this is a
sincere, not s a tiric , presentation.
One suspects that Joyce found a rather happy inspiration for his
treatment of Bloom as Mananaan Mac Lir in the work of his "namesake"
P.W. Joyce. The older Joyce's commentary on the Irish sea-god offers
some interesting parallels to Berard's concept of Odysseus and his re
lationship to Homer:
In Cormac*s Glossary (p. 114) he is brought down to
the level of a mere m an - a successful merchant -
who afterwards became deified: - "Manannan Mac L ir,
a celebrated merchant, who . . . [lived] in the Isle
of Mann. He was the best p ilo t that was in the west
of Europe. He used to know, by studying the sky,
the period which would be the fine weather and the
bad weather, and when these two times would change.
Hence, the Irish and Britons called him 'God of the
Sea' and also Mac L ir , i.e . ‘Son of the Sea.' And
also from the name of Manannan the Isle of Mann is
so called."6
210
Joyce, imitating the form of the ancient Irish chronicler, does exactly
the same— he brings Mananaan down to the level of a mere Leopold Bloom,
semi-successful merchant and ardent student of the sky, who proves
himself ultimately highly successful at navigating the p itfa lls of his
Dublin world. I f Homer could make a Phoenecian navigator into a Greek
mythic hero, why could not Joyce bring a Celtic god down to the level
of a semi-Levantine merchant, and then reinvest him with his deific
powers in the modern world?
Perhaps i t is easier to begin tracing Bloom's metempsychosis
through the comic periphera that surrounds his buried Celtic identity.
Turning from Bloom's 'fishy' ^attributes, there is the matter of his
walk—noticed by several of the Dubliners, especially the rough-,.
tongued tram-driver in nighttown (where the schema indicate the organ
is "locomotor apparatus;") Bloom cogitates on his navigational contre-
*
tempts past and present: "Heel easily catch in tracks or bootlace
in cog. Day the wheel . . . peeled o ff m y shoe . . . Quick of him
though . . . True word spoken in jestV: (IJ, p. 436). While Bloom is
able to laugh at himself here, more than one truth lies in the je s t.
Mananaan's general mode of locomotion is of course the great sea-
chariot; but folk legend observes that when he came up on land among
mortals, "Mananaan had three legs, on which he rolled along the land,
wheel-like . . . and this is the origin of the three-legged figure on
the Manx penny."'7 Reduced by Joyce to a two-legged canvasser, poor
Bloom/Manannaan finds land-1egs a navigational handicap indeed.
211
Immediately after the tram encounter, Bloom, swerving to avoid a rag
man, recalls his cycling misadventures and his one contribution to the
Irish Cyclist, "In darkest Stepaside." Two pages la te r the apparition
of his father confronts him with his ignominious attempt to 'run with
the hounds' as i t were: ", , , drunk as a dog. What you call them
running chaps? . . . Harriers, father . . . They challenged m e to a
sprint. I t was muddy. I slipped" (p. 438). Then the whores pick up
the theme: "Are you going far queer fellow/How's your middle leg":
(p. 450), the sexual slang synthesizing humorously with the Mananaan
emblem in repeated 'third leg' variations. This reaches its height
when effeminate Eg!inton materializes inside the brothel, looking for
plain truth as opposed to "esthetics and cosmetics," and uncovers
Mananaan in the absolute. Briefly illuminated, Mananaan clutches a
crayfish in one hand and a bicycle pum p in the othei— a hilarious bur
lesque on his own locomotive apparatus and, in the pump's pragmatic
mechanical nature, of Bloom's devotion to gadgets and 'progress.1
Mananaan's only in te llig ib le utterance as himself in the novel is "I
won't have m y leg pulled"—amplifying on the brothel joke, but con
taining truths within the jest of the utmost seriousness, as we shall
la te r see.
Not a ll of these clues are confined to permutations of Mananaan's
emblematic or historic appearance; quite the contrary. One of the
most touching and fin a lly most significant parallels lies in Mananaan's
equally famous non-appearance. W hen going about the mortal world on
212
his three legs, Mananaan is "always surrounded by a ceo-draoidheacta,
or 'magic m is t.'"
Mananaan possesses the wonderful cloak of in v is ib ility , and,
except when he chooses otherwise, both himself and his island remain
impenetrable to the sight of men. Here is where Joyce used Bloom's
'nonentity' status to its most te llin g advantage. Bloom, the non
descript average man, moves through Dublin figuratively invisible.
People forget his name; for Mulligan he is merely "the sheeny;" to
some is his identified as Madame Marion's husband. Others vaguely try
to remember his business, his history, his a ffilia tio n s —with usually
to ta lly garbled results. Only gentle Martin Cunningham has Bloom well
enough in mind to remember Rudolph Virag’s suicide. Like Turko the
Terrible, Bloom is the boy who can enjoy in v is ib ility —only he doesn't
enjoy i t very much. Rarely in modern 11terature: has alienation been
delineated with such subtlety and poise, such feeling understatement.
Bloom glides in and out of the funeral, the news o ffice, the sea-side
park, like a ghost. In a final ironic twist, of a ll the people re
ported by the paper as attending Dignam's funeral, only Bloom, who gave
the reporter the names, is the unrecognizable "L. Bloom," while non
existent M'Intosh has his name spelled correctly. As Leopold himself
ruefully projects, for the Dublin world he daily traverses, "from
existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived"
(p. 688).
213
The ambiguity of that statement is all-important to the novel.
I t echoes Stephen's speech on the strand— "I moved among them . . .
that I . . . I spoke to no-one: none to me," and looks forward to the
mystical warning of Columcille in Finnegans Wake:" - God save the monk!
. . . same no can, hom e no w ill, gangin I am . . . You knew m e once but
you won't know m e twice . . (FW, p. 486). A sad prophecy that the
Irish shall miss their chance with one of the lords of lif e . The
embodiment of their ancient vision moves among them one more time, and
i f no one perceives, he, and the s p irit he represents, will disappear
forever.
The qualities Mananaan represents— ideal generosity, courage, and
freedom from jealousy, are the vital issues underlying the complex pun
ning and fun in Joyce's characterization of Bloom. There is l i t t l e ,
i f any irony in Joyce's presentation of Bloom's generosity. Bloom is
of course the m an who avoids standing drinks for his fellows, who makes
a,careful notation of each day's expenditures, and who keeps his check
book locked up: not very Mananaan-1ike on its surface. But throughout
the novel, the tensions and conflicts within each character express the
tensions inherent in the conflicting mythic characters they simula-
neously contain: Joyce's characters thus mirror the state of the col
lective mind of Western man. Many worlds have collided and coalesced
in the Dublin of June, 1904. Set against the lavish generosity pre
scribed by an ancient communal c iv iliza tio n is the necessity for pro
tecting the individual household in a private ownership system.
214
Against the generous impulse of Mananaan Bloom must balance the pru
dence of Odysseus. Bloom's generosity extends to a ll creatures—his
cat, the sea-gulls, the pathetic c a ttle , and, predictably, a special
compassion for horses. His generosity takes a very pragmatic, concrete
form in the financial protection of Dignam's widow. But usually his
benevolence is displayed in a more generalized abstract idealism: his.
v is it to Holies Street is motivated simply by genuine concern. Bloom's
generosity of s p irit is directed most obviously to females, from Si
Dedal us' daughter and lame Gertie MacDowell to poor Mrs. Breen and
even the wretched prostitute who reappears at the cabman's shelter.
But throughout the day, we see in Bloom's judgments on his fellow
Dubliners a generous s p irit at work; in contrast to Stephen's disdain,
Bloom views nearly a ll with humor and compassion. Though he disap
proves of Simon's ruinous squandering, he nonetheless respects his
art and appreciates his s to ry-te lle r's g ift. He apprehends Cunning
ham's goodness and suffering, even though Martin thwarts his effo rt at
'belonging' by te llin g Bloom's story for him in the carriage. Bloom
can even excuse the drunken medicals to a large degree; but his to
lerant generosity is balanced by shrewdness. Bloom's leg cannot be
pulled for long: he quickly perceives the traces of a prison back
ground in the sailor's bluff of Murphy. ■ Because Poldy is so generous-
spirited, his moments of rancorous insight seem particularly revela
tory. Targets of Bloom's disapproval are usually offenders against
women, as in his vehement reaction to Costello which reveals the young
215
man's Cuchulain-1ike disfigurement. But other perceptions are equally
clear, as while conceding Buck's bravery and achievements as a medical,
he is quick to recognize Mulligan's innate selfishness: "I wouldn't
personally repose much trust in that boon companion of yours . . .
He knows what side his bread is buttered on . . . he is what they call
picking your brains" (pp. 620-621). Poldy may be mistaken about a
good many inconsequential things— Italia n pronunciation, the laws of
thermodynamics--but he is a most solid judge of m en in Ulysses.
Guided by his maxim, "I resent violence and intolerance in any shape
or form," (p. 643) his eye discerns the important truths beneath the
outward appearance. I t is a quality most befitting Mananaan, owner of
the G up of truth.
Bloom's own courage, far more steadfast and profound than Buck's
momentary heroism, is amply displayed throughout the novel— in his
a b ility to face unflinchingly the re a litie s of death and decomposition
in 'Hades' and leave with a celebration of lif e on his lips; in his
journey into nighttown to rescue Stephen; in his phantasmagorical
contest with Bella; most pointedly in his encounter with the citizen.
Bloom's is a courage the world seldom calls by that name, because his
kind of courage eschews violent aggression. But i t takes a deeper
courage, after a l l, for a m an to be an alien, to stand up for princi
ples of kindness and generosity in a world bent on vengeance and
spite—to say "love" in the face of hate. The courage to bear witness
to truth is the loneliest courage of all--and the least appreciated
216
by mankind in any age.
In 'Cyclops', Joyce provides us three distinct 'one-eyed' views—
the Dublin raconteur's, the Celtic Twilight's sugary etherealizing of
Old Erin, and, through the citizen, the Gaelic League's genuinely
dangerous isolationism and hatred. All three are false, and cunningly,
the three one-dimensional views do not and cannot coalesce to produce
a true three-dimensional vision. As the narrator enters Kiernan's, a
long 'C eltic' passage, ostensibly designed to present the land of the
Cyclops, actually sets the stage for a druidical test of the three
one-dimensional views in which all fa il to recognize the s p irit of
Bloom/Mananaan: "A pleasant land i t is in sooth of murmuring waters,
fishful streams . . ." (p. 294) is a barely disguised resetting of
Mananaan's own description of Mag M ell, lifte d from "The Voyage of
Bran1 .'" As David Greene has pointed out, "These verses are beautiful in
themselves, and doubly interesting because they seem to reveal a druid
doctrine. The re la tiv ity of time, matter, and identity keep on re-
curring in the lite ra tu re ." And indeed, in this fine poem (Greene
and O'Connor give the version title d "The Two Worlds") all depends upon
point of view—not only Mananaan's and Bran's within the text, but upon
the pagan/Christian societal contest ultimately waged through the
poem's historic rescensions. But le t the poem speak for its e lf:
I t seems to Bran a marvel of delight in his curragh on
a clear sea. To m e in m y own curragh i t is a flowery plain
that I ride about.
217
I t is clear sea to the beaked ship in which Bran
is. In m y two-wheeled chariot i t is M ag Maell which
many blossoms.
The g litte rin g of the sea on which you are, the
brightness of the sea on which you row, has poured forth
yellow and blue - i t is solid land.
Salmon leap from the w om b of the white sea you look
on; they are calves, they are lambs of good colour, in
peace without slaughter.
Though you see but one charioteer in Mag Maell with
its multitude of flowers, there are many horses on its
breast, besides, which you do not see.
The size of the plain and number of the host shine
triumphantly, a white stream of silver, a s ta ir of gold,
cause joy at every feast.
A noble arrangement, they play pleasant games in
innocent con flict, m en and gentle women, under the boughs,
without blame, without original sin.
I t is along the top of a wood that your l i t t l e boat
has sailed across the ridges - a beautiful wood under its
harvest beneath the prow of your small boat.
From the beginning of creation we are without age,
without corruption of the earth; we expect no loss of
strength from decay for original sin has not touched
us.
Far more than Bran's coracle and Mananaan's chariot, the mortal world
and Mag Mell, intersect in this poem. While a ll th irty quatrains can
not be given here, the fu ll work strongly intimates that the pagan
world has been corrupted by violent ideas from afar—among them the
concepts of original sin and hell. Though one quatrain says i t is
a deception to "believe in creatures" and another that salvation must
come from "the King who created us," the poem reverses Christian ex
pectation by revealing that the savior w ill not be Jesus, but Mananaan's
218
son, who w ill be "in the shape of every beast" and who w ill "make
known secrets — a course of wisdom —/In the world;" in short, a
druid. In this "I see/you see" exercise, the viewpoints of pagan and
Christian Ireland collide: the assertion "original sin has not touched
us" may be read as a reference not merely to inhabitants of Mag Mell,
but to the poetic keepers of the ancient beliefs. The poet or poets
who recorded the fu ll version were versed in Christian doctrine, but
include i t in this poem only to refute i t from the mouth of Mananaan.^
Bloom's struggle against the forces of hatred and violence—capital
punishment, suicidal martyrdom for one's country, even cruelty to ani
mals, are dismissed and derided as effeminate in Kiernan's. The con
fluence of the wolf-dog and Bloom/Mananaan—polar opposites in Celtic
mythology—allow the narrator to play on Bloom’ s ineffectual ness as a
man: "So the wife comes out top dog, what?" (p. 313) and all join
in on Bloom's pity for Mrs. Breen, "Pity about her, says the citizen ,
or any other wom an marries a half and half . . . A fellow that's
neither flesh nor fish. - Nor good red herring, says Joe" (p. 321).
Bloom pacifically accepts every barb, until the citizen begins to
ruminate on an Irish navy: Ireland on the sea w ill fly "the oldest
flag afloat . . . three crowns on a blue fie ld , the three sons of
Milesius" (p. 328). Unwittingly, the citizen is steering into Bloom's
unrecognized domain. Bloom w ill not le t this pass unanswered: he
has something to say about naval conduct, and about men's—as Mananaan
had everything to say about the disposition of Ireland after the
219
Milesians had overrun the Danaans in Invasions. The displacement of
the Danaan's emblem by the Milesian's can scarcely be expected to
please the Danaan god, though of course only Joyce and the reader are
in on the joke. Bloom begins mildly enough: "But . . . wouldn't i t
be the same here i f you put force against force?" (p. 329). But when
the nationalist fervor grows uglier, Bloom comes out fighting !
Mananaan's fight--"Persecution . . . a l l the history of the world is
fu ll of i t . Perpetuating national hatred among nations," allowing John
Wyse Nolan a vicious opening: "But do you know what a nation means?"
Undaunted, Bloom rep!ies/'yes," and one is drawn to recall Mananaan's
response to Cormac's "Whence hast thou come, 0 warrior?" . . . "From
a land . . . wherein there is naught save truth, and there is neither
12
. . . envy nor jealousy nor hatred nor haughtiness." Bloom doesn't
give such a direct answer, but his reply, the same people living in the
same place or different places, defines "nation" for us as a state of
mind, a point of view, i f we w ill; a brotherhood of like-minded men,
not a piece of real estate to be warred over. The pub crowd begins to
draw the net of anti-Semitism around Bloom now, but he won't back down,
though he knows what's coming. Once begun, he bravely brings the ra
cial issue out in the open himself, deliberately identifying himself as
a member of a persecuted race: but when the citizen asks "Are you
talking about the New Jerusalem?" Bloom strikes for the greater truth—
"I'm talking about injustice." Taunted to fight injustice with force,
Bloom refuses the bait, and the narrator,* incapable of recognizing the
220
s p irit of the Irish male deity, once more mistakes i t for effeminacy.
Bloom deliberately severs a ll hope for camaraderie with these lost
Dubliners and enunciates a truth they w ill not or cannot recognize:
" - But that's no use . . . Force, hatred, history, all that. That's
not lif e for m en and women, insult and hatred. And everyone knows that
it's the very opposite of that that is really lif e . - What? says A lf. -
Love says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred" (p. 333). Bloom's
abrupt removal from the pub leaves the inmates plenty of time to dis
to rt and misinterpret his meaning and his identity (and allows Joyce
latitude to ring in a multitude of ironic juxtapositions). " - Is he a
jew or a gentile or a Holy Rom an . . . or what the hell is he . . . or
who is he?" Bloom is of course a ll and none of the above. The mis
information about the horse-race whips the atmosphere into an unquali
fied religious fre e -fo r-a ll, and here Joyce masterfully combines !
Bloom's pagan religious identity with his mortal religious iden tifica
tion. Martin's waiting car, in which Bloom is viewed "letting on to be
at sea," is transformed into Mananaan's sea-chariot, complete with
dolphins, and as the crowd showers him with epithets, Bloom shows his
mettle: "Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and
Spinoza. And the Savior was a jew and his father was a jew. Your
God" (p. 342). Then Joyce inserts a marvelous b it of byplay on Bloom's
Celtic-Hebraic synthesis. As the citizen roars "Whose God?" and
Cunningham, trying to calm things down, says of Jesus "He had no
father," Bloom unconsciously reverts to the ancient matriarchy's
221
1ineage-system and cries "Well, his uncle was a jew . . . Your G od was
a jew. Christ was a jew like me" (emphasis rhine). A Jew like Bloom
is very l i t t l e a Jew, in the ordinary sense. But a god like Bloom—
gentle, non-combative, universal—recalls precisely the qualities of
Mananaanwhich his tormentors;fa il to recognize. So Bloom Odysseus
bests the Cyclops, Ben Bloom Elijah mounts to heaven, and Bloom/
Mananaan departs in the sea-chariot--depending on one's point of view.
In all cases, his courage is proved: the willingness to bear bravely
the repercussions of truthfulness--a kind of courage reserved to the
very few.
Joyce shows us generosity and courage in abundance in Leopold,
but Mananaan's third perfect virtue—complete freedom from jealousy—is
the hardest to attain and the most important to acquire, both in the
ancient Celtic world and in the modern one. Bloom's jealousy is d if
fic u lt for him to master on his mortal level, and he struggles from
'Calypso' to 'Ithaca' to gain control. The turning point, as Jackson
13
Cope has demonstrated, is 'Sirens'. Here, Bloom as Mananaan is very
much "in his element" and we watch him resist the siren-call to con
frontation-- to breaking the ancient law by interfering with his wife's
choice—as he plays Mananaan to Blazes Boylan's Cuchulain. Within the
novel, the music-oriented 'Sirens' can be seen as the prelude to the
more openly-presented symbolism of Mananaan in 'Cyclops'—and also
a prelude to Bloom's fresh courage there. In 'Sirens' , however, he
faces the much harder t r ia l: restraint from action within a
222
patriarchal world that insists upon action in this situation above all
others.
The prelude to 'Sirens' touches most of the Celtic elements of
"The Sick-bed of Cuchulain" or "The Only Jealousy of Emer" previously
discussed in ‘ Proteus'; i t functions in other ways on the Celtic level
of the novel as w ell, as a means of symbolic reversal by contrast. The
mare-god's unseen presence—steelyringing hooves—fittin g ly opens the
prelude: her interdict on jealousy is in truth as hard and implacable
as "hoofirons." The listening sirens, bronze by gold, however, only
fa in tly suggest the two emissaries sent by Fann: Joyce disdains to
work by allegory. What bronze by gold do suggest, in addition to m u
sical colorations, are ages in the Hesiodic sense. They keep reminding
us of distance—from anear, from afar— in time and space: of the
figurative 'golden age' of the Danaans and the closer historic bronze
age of the Ulster cycle. "Blue bloom is on the" suggests the blue-
flowered plain of Mag Mel upon which Mananaan rode in the golden age;
to which is added Boylan's jingling jaunting-cart and the sounds of the
immediate modern world—money and the clock. The present is very m uch
with us in the warm flesh-smacking garter—this bell is certainly not
that of the legendary drowned cathedral of Celtic lore. The contest
between love and war—between the female and male aspects of humanity,
developed through Simon's tenor and Dollard's base, fuse the conflicting
spirits of the ancient and modern Irish worlds. "A s a il, a veil,awave
upon the waves" seems a hopeful sign of Mananaan's reascendance,
223
immediately dashed by "Lost." Certainly Bloom's chance to save his
situation—but something farther, fainter in time and space also.
Henry Flower's "I feel so sad. P.S. So lonely blooming" suggests the
loneliness of the long-neglected sea-god. Then a hopeful note "Listen"
is followed by "The spiked and winding cold sea horn." But the in
creasing sea-imagery does not presage a ricorso of the sea-god's
s p irit; there is no recognition. Instead, "You don't? Did not: no,
no: believe." Again the patriarchal version of masculinity inter
venes— "With a cock with a carra. Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do."
And Bloom's defeat in these terms gives echo: "Wait while you wait.
Hee.hee. Wait while you hee." Bloom's 'nomine-domine' is "All gone.
All fallen ." His god's name has been lost in the endless tides of his
tory, in the endless tides also of sexual supplantation, cultural and
personal. I t is the age of aggressive patriarchal man— "Fro. To.
Fro. A baton cool protruding . . . By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen
of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom." Now the former ages, the original
powers do seem receding, and we are confronted with a sense of the
weight of age overshadowing Bloom—the waning of the elder god's sig
nificance. His one last adorer is deserting— "Last rose Castille of
summer le ft bloom I feel so sad alone." The "True men" of a patriar
chal age have eclipsed him: "Ay, ay. Like you men." And sure enough,
the entire ancient world appears to have been obliterated: "Where
bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs?" The dominance
of the sea-god seems faded to a whisper, barely deciperable— "Then,
224
not t i l l then. M y eppripfftaph. Be pfrw itt. Done." Bloom's defeat,
on the hum an and mythic level, would seem complete. But as Cope
points out, ". . . the last word of the prelude is, lik e the last word
of Ulysses, affirm ative, redirectional: 'Begin!"
What begins then, for our purposes, is Bloom's struggle to remain
Mananaan in close proximity with his rival Boylan: to resist the im
pulse to attack, joining the 'dogs.' Here he reprises Stephen's !
imagined Cuchulain-1ike moments in 'Proteus', especially the remembered
frustration in Paris: "Look clock. Must get. Hired dog! Shoot him
to bloody bits with bang shotgun" (p. 42). Stephen also resisted—
even in imagination—by quickly putting his victim back together and
shaking hands. Bloom's impulse on seeing Boylan a third time is for
confrontation: "Follow. Risk i t . G o quick," but as the clock whirs
closer to the fatal hour, his impulse begins to dissolve and he fo l
lows Goulding into the dining room instead of the tap-room of the
Ormond to "Sit tight there. See, not be seen." The dining room is
garnished with rye-bloom, ironically recalling Best's quip about lovers
in the rye and the azure flowers of M ag Mell. In the tap-room, w e
see "Blazures skyblue bow and eyes" and find later he even hasskyblue
clock socks. So Bloom, immersed in the emblems of Mananaan's kingdom,
sits struggling out of sight; an appropriate placement.
In the original legend, we do not see Mananaan and Cuchulain meet,
nor the a ffa ir its e lf, but only the aftermath on the beach. True to
his model, Joyce allows the time to slip by, Bloom sitting passively
225
behind the door outside the tap-room action, until Blazes slips away
unchallenged. "He's o ff. Light sob of breath . . . on the silent
bluehued flowers . . .He's gone." But Bloom's ordeal with jealousy is
just beginning. Even though Bloom has made the ultimate decision and
le t Boylan go— "As easy stop the sea"--*the sounds from the bar s t ill
work on his jealousy and anguish. What Joyce is presenting in the
Ormond bar is an inversion of Mag Mell—a distortion of the kingdom by
forces of patriarchy: he w ill give i t back to us in a purer form in
Cyclops, as we have seen. But f ir s t we hear: in a permutation of
Mananaan's song of 'what do you see/what do I see' the question becomes
a contrast of 'what do you hear/what do I hear,' again recalling
Stephen's experiment on the beach. Compared to the Mag Mell we w ill
see in 'Cyclops', the Mag Mell we hear in 'Sirens' is a sunken world
indeed. Here there are no games of perfect innocence between m en and
women, but "Sonnez la cloche" and the lewd puns of Simon and Cowley;
no calves and lambs without slaughter, but the Croppy Boy and "War,
war." The dogs are having their day. And having their effect on
Bloom: the music, symbolizing the ancient matriarchal/patriarchal con
test in Simon's tenor love-song and Dollard's bass war-song, is heard
by Bloom with undertones of sexual envy. Tenors get hordes of women;
their singing improves their potency. Likewise, Dollard's oversized
genitalia give him his big barreltone voice. Comically, in Bloom's
agitation, even orchestral instruments become grotesque phallic sea-
creatures—horns and snouts blowing like grampuses. All but the harp:
226
evert at his lowest ebb, Mananaan acknowledges his harp as female and
beautiful. For Poldy, the harp recalls the poop, not the prow, of a
ship {whatever his mythic element, Bloom is always Blooml)
During Simon's rendition of Lionel's aria Bloom's anguish becomes
nearly intolerable, and he considers leaving Molly in revenge— "then
false one we had better part . . . since love lives not . . . Cruel
i t seems . . . lure them on. Then tear asunder.'.' Parting blends into
the very real apprehension of old age and death. Moving beyond music's
theme, Bloom is carried past the maudlin and fu tile struggles for
sexual supremacy or even reproductive potency to the truth of the rat
in the graveyard, and, suddenly, "Outtohelloutofthat." H e toys one
maudlin moment with Molly's grieving after him in the romantic sense,
and then something snaps: more than Poldy's rubber band—the false
power of Simon's song, luring him to s e lf-p ity , is broken. That vision
of Molly deserted--"Big Spanishy eyes goggling at nothing"--strikes a
note of pity and compassion that leads Bloom past the histrionics of
revenge, beyond the reach of jealousy, pride of possession, passion.
"He bore no hate . . . Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon
I am old" (p. 285). Soon Molly w ill be, also; widowed, perhaps, or
the other way around. The hard truths of hum an m ortality release
Bloom into pity and tenderness; jealousy has been replaced by compas
sion and truthfulness—f ir s t , the truth that Rudy is only a name. Here
Bloom unconsciously reflects the matriarchal Celtic view that biolo
gical paternity is not the ultimate paternity—he would perhaps accept
227
another man's child; and w ill, by the end of the novel—achieving the
significant role of fosterer. He admits, too, that balancing the score
though Martha Clifford is a bore—and that perfect happiness would be,
too. During the struggle against Simon's song, Bloom's inner voice,
and what i t te lls him, foreshadows Molly's 'Fann song' in 'Penelope'—
a recognition of the inevitable rightness of the pairing of these two—
based as i t is in acceptance of the actual, without romantic illusions.
The confrontation of 'what do you hear/what do I hear' now reaches
its climax in Joyce's inverted Mag Mell. The gang in the bar hears
wonderful poignance and national glory in Dollard's rendition of "The
Croppy Boy." Bloom hears phoniness and maudlin stupidly— "Lumpmusic."
The Croppy Boy is a dupe on more than one level: on the mythic, he has
been lured into the CuchuTain trap. "Ruin them. Wreck their lives
. . . hush-aby. Lullaby. Die, dog. L ittle dog, die." As betrayal
upon betrayal multiplies in the tap-room, Bloom decides it's "Time
to be shoving." The last thing he hears from the whiskey-soaked male
arena is "General chorus off for a swill to wash i t down," on which he
reflects, "Glad I avoided." Like Stephen, he has avoided joining the
Cuchulains. O n a higher plane, as Mananaan, he has avoided breaking
the law of Mare-god. While the group at Ormond remains "deepmoved
a ll," Bloom, sailing o ff unscathed, shrewdly reflects of the Croppy
Boy, "he must have been a b it of a natural not to see i t was a yeoman
cap." Joyce administers the auditory coup de grace as Bloom breaks
wind a the heroics of Emmet. But in contrast to the fading-away which
228
the prelude suggested, Bloom's farting on heroics in the complete con
text is assertive, revitalizin g . Unseduced by the counters of p atri
archy—neither the doucereoux sexual by-play and romantics, nor the
false call to heroics, Bloom is on his actually courageous way to ac
cepting Molly's freedom without giving in to the distorting patriar
chal pressures that would label him cuckold and coward. Like Stephen,
he has a long way to go, but he has definitely 'begun.'
But Joyce did not invest Leopold Bloom with the mythic personal of
Mananaan Mac Lir solely to counterpoint or expose possessiveness and
heroics, important though those themes are. In Ulysses Mananaan Mac
Lir is the one great goal toward which Stephen moves, and, conversely,
Stephen is the goal of Mananaan. While Bloom plays Mananaan to Boy-
lan's Cuchulain in Sirens', and to Molly's Fann in ' Ith aca', he plays
Mananaan to Stephen's Cormac Mac Art throughout the novel. Set beside
the overwhelming prevalence of the Homeric father/son quest in Ulysses,
this relationship of Mananaan to Cormac fa lls outside of the purview
of father/son archetypes altogether. Mananaan's and Cormac's relation
to each other is a highly stylized and symbolic study in the relation
of Truth to Art, and Joyce's incorporation of "Cormac's Adventures in
the Land of Promise" is a vital key to the novel.
For the Revival, "Cormac's Adventures" provided yet another op
portunity to H ellen ize,^ to point with pride to the existence of an
"Irish Helicon." But the legend is more complex -than that: Cormac,
a historical.king circa 200 A.D., seems a curiously modern intrusion
229
in what otherwise appears to be a very ancient Druidic lesson on poetic
responsibility. Possibly the legend was affixed to Cormac's lif e to
explain and amplify his very considerable achievements as king— his
uncanny a b ility for true judgment, his great g ift as writer of law and
history, and his clear association with Druidism. Anachronisms and
all, however, this incisive study of poetic power and its uses is pro
bably one of the most revealing works we have on the Druidic attitude
toward the sources and functions of poetic art. The legend its e lf is
a Druidic riddle, and suits Joyce's purposes perfectly.
"Cormac's Adventures" opens with the words, "Cormac's Cup was a
cup of gold which he had. The way in which i t was found was thus:"
15
and we are o ff on a 'Gold Cup race' of a very different nature.
Alone on Tara plain, Cormac meets a strange, elegant warrior carrying
"A branch of silver with three golden apples . . . Delight and amuse
ment enough i t was to listen to the music made by the branch . . . m en
sore wounded, or wom en in childbed or folk in sickness would fa ll
asleep at the melody." Asked where he is from, the warrior replies
"From a land . . . wherein there is naught save truth . . . neither
age nor decay nor gloom nor sadness nor envy nor jealousy nor hatred
nor hauntiness." W e know he is Mananaan, of course, having discussed
the passage previously. In the legend Cormac doesn't recognize him,
and a great part of the riddle's effect lies in the slow revelation of
/
Mananaan's identity. For the moment, Cormac ruefully concedes that in
his kingdom of Ireland, " It is not so with us," and asks quickly,
230
"Shall we make an alliance?" The warrior agrees, and Cormac abruptly
demands, "Give m e the branch." Here, surely, is the implement for
creating in his kingdom the perfect peace of the other's. The warrior
relinquishes the harp in return for three boons, to which the anxious
king agrees without asking what they are, so eager is he for the power
of the branch. Cormac is himself clearly mesmerized by the mesmeric
power of the harp—his f ir s t act is to put the entire court to sleep.
In sum, Cormac is not yet f i t to control the awesome power of art that
has been placed in his hands. Like a child, he plays with i t , misuses
i t , as we have seen young Stephen abuse the magic power of words in the
library episode and elsewhere. Stephen has a great g if t , but he puts
i t often to unworthy mesmeric uses: he enjoys his power over others,
at times more than he cares about the truth of what he is saying. He
is a young Cormac. But Mananaan has plans for Cormac. At the end of
a year, the warrior comes to claim the f ir s t boon— he takes away the -
king's daughter. Shocked and outraged, the w om en of Tara set up a
great screaming, but Cormac, his lesson not yet learned, uses the
branch to banish grief and put their outrage to sleep. The next year
the warrior takes the king's son, the-entire kingdom is distraught with
grief and rage, but again Cormac beclouds the re a lity of sorrow and
the need for action— "Cormac shook the branch at them and their sorrow
le ft them" (p. 504). The third year, the warrior carries o ff the
king's wife, and "That thing Cormac could not endiire." Eschewing the
comfort of the enchanting harp, Cormac sets o ff in pursuit. Exactly
231
as he planned, Mananaan has got the self-fascinated fledgling ollamh
to follow him into the Land of Promise where, through a series of
tr ia ls , Cormac w ill learn the meaning of trust and the absolute value
of truth before he may play the harp in the world again. W hen he
returns, he has Mananaan's Gold Cup of truth to stand beside the harp.
I f lies are told in its presence, the Cup fa lls into three pieces, and
truth must be told until i t is restored: the Druidic antidote to the
dangers of art.
Ulysses Leopold Bloom hovers about Stephen throughout the
novel, but three encounters are essential: the near-miss in the l i
brary at which Stephen remembers, "Last night I flew. Easily flew
. . . In. You w ill see who," the direct meeting at the lying-in hos
pital where we are told that Stephen has been led astray from "that
other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise,"
by a whore after which Stephen slips away from Bloom into the kips,
and the third encounter in 'Circe' where Bloom fin a lly succeeds in
leading Stephen away from the boozing Dublin 'dog's world' into the
precincts of 7 Eccles street. At each interval, Bloom's emblematic
ties to Mananaan are strengthened: in the library he is simply looking
for Keyes ad—the emblem of Manx rule; in 'Oxen' he has the vision of
his daughter as Macha; in 'Circe' a fu ll range of Mananaan symbols,
is expanded to prepare us for 'Ithaca. 1 Here, Mananaan and the ancient
s p irit he represents are tried , mocked, and crucified—but only to rise
again; the tide turning fin a lly , on all levels, in Bloom's favor.
232
Unlike Homer's Odyssey, the force that turns m en .and wom en into
beasts in Joyce's 'Circe' is not simple lust. Rather, i t is the dis
torting pressure of patriarchy on the naturally balanced male/female
characteristics of a ll complete hum an beings: a force that sunders
s p irit from flesh, in tellect from body, art from nature, and, at its
worst extension, exaggerates masculinity into cruelty and femininity ‘
into degradation. I f brothels are b u ilt with the bricks of religion,
Joyce has extended Blake's vision to include not only the Judeo-Chris-
tian tradition, but a universal indictment of pagan patriarchal systems
as well. The Rosevean from Bridgewater with bricks was the last thing
Stephen saw as he le ft the beach: its cruciform symbolism foreshadowed
the devastation as we see in 'C irce'—a crucifixion of W om an on all
levels. And the focal point of this force is on Bloom's female half.
The sins that come to accuse, enslave, and torture Bloom are products
of his own oppressive g u ilt for his female proclivities, his sexual
ambivalence. From the point of view of a heavily patriarchalized
world, Bloom's 'womanish' characteristics are aberrant and shameful:
from a Celtic point of view the aberrance lies with the other camp and
their distorted vision.
In 'Circe' all 'uncreators' past and present, lite ra ry , p o litic a l,
and religious, are gathered into a prolonged attack on Bloom. Cam-
brensis is of course very prominant as "Gerald," the friend who led
Bloom astray into wearing women's clothes and urinating sitting down.
16
Valerius Maximus returns through "Philip Drunk and Philip Sober,"
235
apparitions who keep Stephen riddling Pythagorus' metempsychosis doc
trine as well as his octave theory: " If I could only find out about
octaves. Reduplication of personality. W ho was i t told m e his name?
(p. 518). I t was Valerius who affixed Pythagorus' nam e to Celtic be
lie f. The chapter is so dense with historical and mythological a llu
sions that one cannot catalogue them a ll. Classical and Teutonic views
are represented through the Homeric framework its e lf and through the
Gotterdammerung ambience. More contemporary uncreators flash through
the spectrum: the British Empire in the two Tommies, the distorted
vision of the Nationalists in numerous Dublin denizens, and the equally
faulty view of the Twilight lite r a ti in Best and Eg!inton. Perhaps one
of the stronger presences here is that old target of Keating's— Edm und
Spenser, although he is n 't named. For the 'Circe' episode is reared
on one of the most prominent recurrent archetypal nightmares of pa
triarchal 1 iterature—the uneasy fear of sex-role reversal inherent in
"Hercules and Omphale"--a legend expanded to its fu lle s t implications
(until Ulysses) by Edm und Spenser in the Artegall and Radigund episode
of The Faerie Queene^. This was definitely not a possibility Buck had
in mind when he so gaily toasted "omphalos" at the novel's opening:
i t is an ironic twist which Joyce can and does exploit to the fu llest
in his epic examination of racial conscience and a generalized hum an
unconscious. The Hercules and Omphale archetype, in both Classical
and Renaissance treatments, reveals a deep apprehension of g u ilt and
shame—the oppressor's g u ilt in which the worst end imaginable is to
234
come under the power of that which one has oppressed; to become the
object of a like degradation. Spenser's exploration of the inherent
degradation in a female role was bounded by his own society's trad i
tional patriarchal rationale: Joyce takes license to add another d i
mension to the patriarchal fear of fears: this is Hercules and Omphale,
Artegall and Radigund dislodged from the axes of a received societal
point of view—a patriarchal nightmare viewed through the lens of a
matriarchal testament. In 'Circe' racial conscience and a nearly uni
versal hum an unconscious contest to expose (as hinted in the reported
lynching of the "black beast" earlier) the root cause—guilty con
science—of the unbalanced aggression of the 'bulls' and 'dogs.'
Bloom begins the contest by declaring "Their reign is rover"—and
the ascendance of his phantasmagorical Bloomusalem begins. Bloomsalem
(and its subsequent counterpart FIowervilie) has been justly inter
preted as a burlesque of bourgeois aspirations. Certainly its more
comic elements—saloon motor hearses, esperanto, electric dishscrub-
bers—express Joyce's own cynicism about the rising materialism of
the twentieth century. But while he could be esthetically offended,
Joyce was not temperamentally suited, nor desirous, to join the 'big
house' elitism of Moore and Yeats. I f Joyce is a Jesuitical e lit is t ,
"Yet I have certain ideas I would like to give form to; not as doc
trine but as a continuation of the expression of myself . . . These
ideas or . . . impulses may be purely personal. I have no wish to
18
codify myself as anarchist or socialist or reactionary." What better
235
place to give these "impulses" expression than in the Expressionist
drama he created in 'Circe'--where, having bequeathed to his character
Bloom his personal sexual proclivities, he appears to have invested him
also with his personal socialist leanings? And there is yet another
dimension to Bloomsalem which counteracts its merely comic aspects: in
its close association with Mananaan's kingdom, Mag Mell, the Flowery
Plain, Poldy's socialist state has at its base a very ancient prece
dent in the lite ra l communal world of pagan Ireland. Leopold's dream,
while embellished with comic touches, is carefully orchestrated with
the emblems of a lost Celtic world in which those comedic elements ap
pear cruel parodies of what were once unique institutions in an extra
ordinarily benevolent society. Joyce began this contrast in 'Lestry-
gonians' where, revolting from the modern world of "Eat or be eaten.
K ill! K ill!" Bloom unconsciously reconstructs the ancient king-vat of
the free public hostel—mandatory under Brehon law: "Suppose that
communal kitchen years to come perhaps . . . Want a soup pot as big as
the Pheonix Park. Harpooning flitches and hindquarters out of it"
(p. 170). Even there, Bloom's hyperbole was not to tally s illy : the
huge wheeled vats and their accompanying flesh-forks were quite massive,
as observations at most of Europe's museums can attest. Here, in
'Circe!, the Epona king-ritual of Tirconnell, the central emphasis on
lite ra tu re , the high assembly at Tara, and the ubiquitous generosity
and hospitality laws are all discernible, though sadly distorted, in
Bloom's investiture. Pointedly asked "W hen w ill we have our own house
236
of keys"—a direct allusion to the rule of Mananaan— Bloom's answer,
"New worlds for old. Union of a ll . . . general amnesty . . . N o more
patriotism of barspongers and dropsical imposters. Free money, free
love and a free lay church in a free lay state" (p. 489).ironically
sets up a contrast between a very old world and the present one.
Bloom's dreams of the future are simultaneously a remembrance of
things past, and perhaps Bloomusalem only seems so comic because the
institutions of the present world have made the ancient communal system
appear hopelessly id e a lis tic . While ancient Ireland in its earliest
stages had no money, but bartered in communal tribal c a ttle , i t did
have, in the various epochs of its history, free love, a free lay
church,in the curious interpenetrated monastic-poetic union, and of
course no prostitution. The extreme sexual freedom that "Dio's Cale
donian lady" flaunts simply precluded the concept of hired females—one
finds nothing comparable to the Hetaerae or to Geishas in Celtic l i t -
erature^ Despite its anachronistic absurdities (or perhaps because of
them) Bloomusalem is not so far in s p irit after all from ancient Ire
land and its ideal representation, the Flowery Plain. I t is a world
without sin or guilt or the suffering caused by selfishness. But i t
is a world without gain—and immediately, those who p ro fit most from
plying the sins and guilts of their fellows set about to demolish
Bloomusalem: the priest, the whoremonger, and the evangelist. Pre
dictably, a vast chorus of voices enters into Bloom's condemnation.
Accused (Cambrensis-style, in view of the Tirconnell context) of
237
sodomy, Bloom is exposed as androgynous— "the new womanly man," (p. 493)
and we return briefly to another variant of the "Debility of the Ulster
men"—this time with Bloom, rather than Macha, as the mocked birth-
giver. However, Joyce deliberately conflates his mythologies here,
with an important result: Bloom's "children" are the product of
smith-craft-gold and silver, recalling Mananaan's quatrains of Mag
Mell. All are valuable art-works, in the Danaan sense. Joyce is
working hard here to balance the matriarchal/patriarchal counters of
the Ulster cycle with the a rtis tic concerns of the Cormac legend, both
of which are inherent in his Bloom/Mananaan figure. Mananaan's presence
here must be equally rooted in the a rtis tic aspects inherent in the
Cormac legend i f the fu ll nature of Bloom's relation to Stephen is to
be realized. The male/female theme must run tandem with the tru th /art
theme, and Joyce has already planted several clues: purusing Stephen
into nighttown, Bloom . . stands at Cormack's corner watching,"
(p. 434) and i t is Bloom's discerning musical ear, identifying
Stephen's playing, that brings him to the correct house— "A man's
touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here" (p. 475). The ar
tis tic concerns receive a final comic twist in the demolition of
Bloomusalem and Bloom's ascendance: fin a lly , the misapprehended
Mananaan suffers the ultimate contemporary Irish ignominy—he is
"Kiltartanized," and speaking as a character in an August Gregory
production, he declares he prefers death to this: "All insanity.
Patriotism, sorrows for the dead, future of the race . . . I am
238
ruined . . . Farewell I' ;(p. 449). Despite the prayers of the "Daugh
ters of Erin" the elder god appears to have willed his own end, and
as Mananaan and the Flowery Plain fade out, Bloom comes back to the
immediate here and now of Zoe and the brothel with a b itter "Man,and
woman, love, what is it? A cork and a bottle."
From this point, the hallucinations can scarcely be said to be
even seriocomic. The satire plunges into the Expressionist nightmare
bitterness of Strindberg—veering toward dementia and very frightening.
Both Stephen and Bloom are put on tria l by the dark imps of their ow n
unconscious minds, horribly allowed to assume external forms. Forster
once said that in 'Circe'" . . . smaller mythologies swarm and pullu-
19
late, like vermin between the scales of a poisonous snake." The
saurian imagery is apt, but none of these mythologies is "smaller."
In 'Circe1, the conflicting inheritances of the mind of Western m an
threaten to tear that mind apart as sexual ambivalence is pushed a l
most to the point of schizophrenia. As Bloom enters the brothel, the
saurian imagery enters with him: newsboys outside with the Gold Cup
edition cry "Results'of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the
royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist," and, "(Stephen turns and
sees Bloom)" (p. 506). As Mananaan, Bloom has close associations to
the horse and sea emblems, the sea creature in this context is sug
gestive of a Celtic opposite not precisely to Christ himself, but to
the organized Judeo-Christian system. Bloom already has been
239.
identified by the one-dimensional vision of 'Cyclop's' narrator as
Elijah, but here in 'Circe' we detect the error of that iden tifica
tion—as a rocket rushes up to proclaim the second coming, the end of
the world takes "the form of the Three Legs of Man," and sings an old
sea chanty. Moreover, Elijah appears peculiarly conflated with the
prophet Ezekiel, with his famous wheel and with his prophecy of doom
for Jerusalem as a whore. What ensues is an elaborate contest of two
"old wheelmen" as i t were—Virag/Elijah-Ezekiel and Bloom/Mananaan:
a contest between two religious visions— the Judeo-Christian and the
Celtic testament Joyce is constructing. The vision Virag represents
is slowly exposed as the distorted fakery of the tent-evangel1st
Dowie, and Elijah is revealed as on the 'dog's' side, moving from
Dowie's vulgar "Are you a god or a doggoned clod?" (p. 507) to Virag's
lite ra l transformation into a dog: "(his eyes agonizing in his fla t
skull neck and yelps over the mute world) A son of a whore" (p. 520).
Vi rag/El ijah/Ezekiel is in fact a bundle of hatreds—against gentiles,
against women, against l i f e , fin a lly — like Strindberg's Hummel,
s tiflin g ultimately in the "parrot's" or mummy's closet in The Ghost
20
Sonata. The Elijah we see here is divested of dignity and offers
none of the awesomeness of the Mananaan presented.
W hen exposed by Eg!inton's 'truth latern' Mananaan's Tantfic
mumbo-jumbo, absurd as i t is , is accompanied by a portrait of the sea-
god that is not really laughable: "The bearded figure of Mananaan
Mac Lir broods, chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows
240
from his druid mantle." W hen he speaks, i t is "with the voice of the
waves . . .. With the cry of stormbirds . . . with the vehemence of
the ocean" (p. 510). Even in nightmare parody, Mananaan is not with
out strange power—an irreducible mystery Joyce withholds from Elijah-
Ezekiel. U nintelligible, Mananaan's voice is preferable to Elijah's
tent-show patter and the poll-parrot squawk of his music, "Whore-
usalem." S t i l l , passivity on Bloom's part--and on Mananaan's (who is
only visible in Stephen's hallucination)—seems to allow the dogs to
carry the day again, as in 'Sirens' and 'Cyclops'. But by now the
reader should be fam iliar enough with the 'fading away' pattern of
Bloom/Mananaan to anticipate a reversal. In contrast to Homer's swine,
doggish references and behavior accelerate until we see Lynch catching
candies, dog-fashion, in his teeth: at this point, Bella Cohen enters,
and we feel that the 'dogs' are about to pay the price figuratively as
well as lite r a lly , for she appears to enter as Morrigu--"her falcon
eyes a g litte r," and ironically accuses Bloom as though he were Cuchu-
lain , "Hound of dishonor" (p. 530).
But Joyce has, i t seems, an endless store of variations and per
mutations on his themes: he never repeats a configuration without
confounding our expectations and revealing new facets of relationship.
In this instance, what follows is more repugnant than even the punish
ment of the Morrigu: a playing-out of the patriarchal nightmare of
Hercules and Omphale in an arena no longer bounded by the constraints
of euphemistic symbolism or traditional lite ra ry decorum. This is the
241
real truth of the female role in a patriarchal world, revealed through
an intense brutality of language, and Joyce spares nothing as Bloom/
Mananaan takes upon himself, in the role of a woman, the fu ll price of
the sins of the world. In an unpredictable twist of the mythic ka
leidoscope, Bella becomes not the avenging aspect of the Mare-god as
"hoofs" led us to expect, but the destructive bull instead. But i f w e
are revolted, doubly so, because Bloom is , after a ll, a man, and
should not tolerate this treatment--the inherent opposite question is
equally unavoidable in the text. W hy is the scene more repulsive sim
ply because we know Bloom is a man? The degradations presented, i f
we can divorce them for a moment from the horrendous language in which
they are dressed, are nothing more, fin a lly , than twisted fantasies
which whores—and wom en other than whores—are subjected to in l i t e r
ature and, unhappily, in lif e . The fact that such fantasies had never
been set down in such unpalatable language until Ulysses does not
lessen— in fa ct, the language heightens—this ugly truth. I f the
central victim in this scene had been actually a woman, much of the
outrage we feel would be lost: i t is Bloom's status as a male that
produces the squeamish extreme of repulsion. What traditionally has
been merely the t it illa t in g 'fun' of pornographic staples, Bloom's
(and indeed Joyce's own) mild toying with the shadow of sado-masochism,
is suddenly turned on us in its hideous primal form. The wish to be
whipped, to play Ruby, the Pride of the Ring, is basically the wish to
feel what i t is like to be a woman, as i t must be imagined by those
242
whose society has allowed this to mean what "being a woman" is. Joyce
is particularly merciless as he gags us on Sweets of Sin w rit very
large and ugly; though he w ill later show us through Molly that the
men's nightmare here is not, by any means, the whole story.
Within the Celtic framework, as Joyce synthesizes elements of the
Ulster cycle with more pertinent (for this section) allusions to
"Cormac's Adventures", 'Circe's 'blatant sexual surface of matriarchal/
patriarchal contest is modified by a deeper conflict of a rtis tic phil
osophies inherent in the Celtic vision. As he did in -'Cyclops', Bloom
passively—and sometimes vo litio n ally—accepts insult, here in the form
of sexual degradation. He does so until the nymph, flaunting purity
and the Platonic ideality of Classical a rt— "W e immortals . . . have
not such a place and no hair there either. W e are stonecold and pure.
W e eat electric lig h t"—presses her advantage too far with "Only the
ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the water dull." This
is basically a contest of a rtis tic visions—the fleshless ideal set
against the pagan Celtic practice of fu ll physical rea lity of pre
sentation. The Irish immortals all certainly "have such a place," and
emphatically so. But with her "dreamy creamy gull," the nymph, like
the Citizen,before her, has strayed too close to the Celtic primal
source—the sea; Bloom's Mananaan aspect emerges immediately with the
bip of a button: "(Coldly) You have broken the spell" (p. 554). He
counters her ideality and 'Twilight' fa ls ity with the truth of phy
sical re a lity , " If there were only the ethereal where would you all
243
be . . ." and demolishes the nymph with a torrent of rapid exposures
which dramatize the paradox of a rtis tic perfection without physical
re a lity . The worst of the old Druid curses was the stoppage of the
flow of bodily substances: in the nymph we see the result of ideality
in just those terms. Encased in her ideality the nymph is not only
incapable of fecundity5but, denied outlets of re a lity , she is a mass
of corruption within. What the nymph represents, as Mananaan reveals
her, is , in terms of esthetic philosophy, the harp without the cup.
His truth-discerning powers now in ascendance, Bloom is ready to
take on Bella herself. W hen Bella tries to intimidate Mananaan's
s p irit with an inversion of Columcille's warning, "You'll know m e the
next time," Bloom penetrates the lame bluff with "Passee. Mutton
dressed as lamb," and then "I'm not a trip le screw propel!er"--adroitly
distinguishing his Manx emblem from the overblown masculinity of the
current age. The breaking of the spell clears the way for his direct
contact with Stephen, and we notice, in contrast to the Odyssey, he has
accomplished the ordeal without the "moly." Only now does Bloom re
trieve his potato, and from this point, the episode moves toward a
suggestive intensification of the Cormac—Mananaan legend as Bloom
and Stephen draw inevitably closer.
In the legend, among the tests or riddles Cormac encounters in
his journey is the lesson of the th riftles s young chief. I t is but
one step in his serious t r i a l —that of learning to trust and to make
correct evaluations. Alone and defenseless in a strange place, Cormac
244
makes a d iffic u lt journey toward truth, and we see a parallel to the
f ir s t steps of that journey begin--at f ir s t very tentatively-~in
'Circe' when Stephen, certainly the th riftless young chief of the m o
ment, allows Bloom to take charge of his money. Bloom's discreet
"W hy pay more" foreshadows Mananaan's lesson, as Bloom w ill amplify
i t more fu lly in the following chapter. Stephen's reply "Be just be
fore you are generous5 ,1 " and Bloom's reply, "I w ill, but is i t wise?"
(p. 559) are an ambiguous play on the relationship that w ill develop
between them. I t contrasts the wisdom of the 'Nestor' episode with
"a course of wisdom" that Stephen is about to learn. The "old wisdom"
Stephen w ill learn from this stranger is the inverse of "I paid m y
way" motto of the current sea's cold ruler. For Mananaan, wisdom,
generosity, and justice have meanings beyond the ken of a Mr. Deasy.
The palm-reading brings Stephen and Bloom into closer conjunction,
Stephen with the woman's hand and Bloom with "Knobby knuckles for the
women;" and though this leads into a relapse on Bloom's part into a
voyeuristic contemplation of his recent cuckolding, that relapse allows
Joyce to strengthen the horse and horse-race motifs and to bring the
older and younger m an to conjoin on the a rtis tic level, f ir s t through
Shakespeare imagery and then through the dream. Stephen, in his pro
phetic 'Hamlet" aspect suddenly realizes his dream is materializing,
but the counters are all wrong: the ambiguous dialogue that takes
place between the two principals at this point underscores the re
lationship between Cormac and Mananaan in..its counterpointing of the
245
contrast between ethereal imaginings and concrete truths. Stephen,
bewildered and disappointed says " It was here. Street of harlots . . .
Where's the red carpet spread? B LO O M (approaching Stephen) Look . . .
STEPHEN ; ■ No, I flew . . . (He cries) Pater.1 Free! B LO O M I say,
look . . .V (pp. 571-572). The subject of Stephen's quest is standing
squarely before him, but Stephen is not yet capable of 'seeing' as
Mananaan sees. He rejects Bloom's com m and to "look" at the outward
truth before him, and immediately fa lls prey to his inner hallucina
tions.
Stephen's hallucinatory sequence is marked by even stronger horse
imagery merging with his mother-guilt, bringing the hum an personal
conscience and the undercurrent of racial conscience together. Strug
gling for release from his failu re to save his 'mother' on both levels,
Stephen begs his consubstantial mother for "The word known to all
men"— in Celtic terms, the permissive, accepting matriarchal "yes."
But Stephen's Catholic mother-ghost can give only the answer her pa
triarchal world has bequeathed: "Repent! 0, the fire of hell." Like
Bloom's grandfather, her vision is Dowie's—sin, g u ilt, punishment.
In her, "God's hand" is an inversion of aquatic symbol ism— " (a green
crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Ste
phen's heart)" (p. 582). Here, May Goulding's disease and its zodi
acal symbol allow Joyce a further opportunity to play on the distortion
of sea-emblems. Recoiling, Stephen unconsciously defies these powers
in Celtic terms— " I ' l l bring you all to heel," and strikes the lamp.
246
But he only dents the shade: the wizard powers he imagined are not so
strong in re a lity . Stephen does not yet have the power to bring the
dogs to heel—but Bloom does. Confronting Bella once more, Bloom de
flects the "bulldog on the premises" threat with his stronger powers
of insight and knowledge: "And i f i t were your own son at Oxford?
(Warningly) I know." To which Bella responds with the ubiquitous
question of the novel — "W ho are you /incog?" (p. 585).
The climax outside the brothel is a culmination of the forces at
work in the unconscious of both principals throughout the day; but
more strongly a culmination of the forces struggling for dominance in
the racial conscience--symbolized here in the opposing voices of the
shape-shifting dog and the mysterious.horse. As Mina Purefoy, symbol
of the female principle, is sacrificed in the Black Mass, both damned
and blessed, both Dog and God, as intoned by the voice of Adonai,
produce only s trife and hatred. The aggression of the m ilitary fig
ures is heavily underscored by the Retriever, whose barking reaches its
crescendo at Stephen's f a ll. Once more, Bloom's generosity and cour
age—but more importantly, his power of truth-discerning—comes to the
fore: surrounded by the authorities, Irish constabulary and British
army, Bloom angrily accuses,Carr, "You h it him without provocation.
I'm a witness. Constable, take his regimental number" (p. 603, empha
sis mine). The power of truth has a stronger effect here than physical
force: Compton and Carr, in their s e rv ility , cannot deal with expo
sure as they might with a physical attack from Bloom. As Bloom ■
247
reprises Stephen's Paris imaginings "Not hurt? 0, that's a ll right.
Shake hands . . . " (p. 42) in his dealings with the constables, Joyce
permits the resurgence of the horse to eclipse the presence of the dog,
who presumably, like Carr and Comptonv has scuttled o ff into the dark.
The horse neighs "Hohohohome," but Stephen's fate is not to be taken
hom e in Kelleher's car. The horse intones hom e a second time, but
unlike Martin's car e a rlie r, Kelleher's does not become a substitute
sea-chariot, either. The message is clear, the.horse is now pre
dominant, but Stephen and Bloom have yet a long way to go to reach
their "one great goal," and Joyce chooses to leave them unaided— to
struggle i t out on their land-legs as best they can. Listening to
Stephen's broken recital of Fergus and his rule of the brazen cars,
Bloom responds with his own mysterious recital ". . . swear I w ill a l
ways h a il, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts
. . . in the rough sands of the sea . . . a cabletow's length from the
shore . . . where the tide ebbs . . . . and flows" (p. 609). The ebb and
flow of the tide have brought Bloom another son—Rudy's apparition
makes that clear. But this son is predicated on far different grounds
than those of Homeric consubstantiality, or any other symbolic father/
son configuration offered by traditional archetypal structures. As
Mananaan, what Bloom hails is the power whom Mananaan serves— the an
cient god of art and poets. For a very long time, Mananaan has con
cealed, "in the rough sands of the sea," not merely his identity and
his land (as the constant query "who are you? underscores throughout
248
Ulysses) but more importantly the secret of the druids' art. But now
Mananaan is about to take a fosterling—the f ir s t time this has hap
pened in Irish literatu re since he chose Cormac. Stephen is on his
way to receiving a cup and a drink, and the only unqualified hospi
ta lity he (or we) witness in the novel.
Once we leave the hallucinatory world of nighttown, the Cormac
legend proper becomes the counterpart to Homer's. 'Eumaeus' and the
f ir s t half of 'Ith aca'. To trace the Celtic significance of Bloom's
and Stephen's merging from this point, i t is best to turn b riefly to
the legend its e lf. In the "Adventures," Cormac, rushing out with his
hosts to regain his stolen wife, is surrounded by a magic mist and
finds himself alone and weaponless. Nonetheless, he presses onward and
comes to a fortress of silver, ". . . half thatched with wings of white
21
birds." A host of fa iry horsemen are attempting to complete the
thatching, but as soon as they apply more wings, the wind carries them
away. Cormac then passes a young m an kindling a f ir e , but though the
m an labors ceaselessly dragging heavy logs, he can only just manage to
keep the fire going. Finally arriving at a vast palace, this one
fu lly thatched with white birds' wings, Cormac discovers "a shining
fountain, with five streams flowing out of i t , and the hosts in turn
drinking its water . . . the sounds of the fa llin g of those streams
was more melodious than any music that m en sing." Now Cormac's testing
begins. Although he is alone and weaponless, and has come here in
h o s tility , he must proceed in the blind trust that the primary rule of
249 1
generosity, the hospitality law, w ill not be broken in this unknown
place. He boldly enters the palace and his faith is rewarded, for a
magnificent warrior and a beautiful wom an are waiting for him, and the
hospitality ritual of foot-bathing is magically performed. But now the
real tria l is at hand: a pig is brought in, to be cooked for the eve
ning meal, but this is a magical pig and can only be cooked by tellin g
truths—one truth for each quarter of the pig. There are four people
present: the kitchener, the warrior, the princess, and Cormac. In
turn, the f ir s t three te ll fables inherent in all descriptions of M ag
Mel!—the 'truths' of its sources of endless plenty. Three quarters
of the pig are now cooked, and the three turn in unison to Cormac with
" it is now thy turn." This is the king's moment of truth quite l i t e r
a lly: alone and defenseless, w ill.he have the strength to expose his
hostile reason for being in their midst? Without hesitation, Cormac
reveals his truth: "So Cormac related how his wife and his son and
daughter had been taken from him, and how he himself had pursued them
until he arrive at that house . . . with that whole pig was boiled."
Now king Cormac apparently feels so secure in this “land wherein there
is naught save truth" that he becomes nearly giddy with daring--almost
rude with honesty: when his portion is placed before him he asserts
his privilege as Ireland's High-King, "I never eat a meal . . . with
out f if t y in m y company." This kingly arrogance is , after a ll, the
truth, and so brings no retaliation from the host. Cormac is put to
sleep and awakens surrounded by f if t y warriors and his lost family.
At the height of the joyous feast which ensues, a gold cup is brought
to the mysterious host, and while Cormac is marvelling at its craftsman
ship, the host informs him "There is something about i t s t ill more
strange . . . le t three falsehoods be spoken under i t , and i t w ill
break in three. Then le t three true declarations be made.. . . and it
w ill unite as i t was before." Cormac1s enlightenment begins with a
demonstration of the cup, which the warrior gives him: ". . . take the
cup that thou mayest have i t for discerning between truth and false
hood. And thou shalt have the branch for music and delight. And on
the day thou shalt die they w ill be taken from thee. I am Mananaan
son of Lir . . . king of the Land of Promise; and to see the Land of
Promise was the reason I brought thee hither. The host of horsemen
. . . thatching the house are the m en of art in Ireland, collecting
cattle and wealth which passeth into nothing. The m an . . . kindling
the fir e is a th riftles s young chief, and out of his housekeeping he
pays for everything he consumes. The fountain which thou sawest, is
the Fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through
which knowledge is obtained. And no one w ill have knowledge who i
drinks not a draught out of the fountain and out of the streams.' The
folk of many arts are those who drink of them both" (p. 507). The
beauty of a rt, then, is to be controlled in its overwhelming power by
theequal power of truth: what can be tested and known by the senses.
"The folk of many arts" b u ilt their art on a foundation of physical
observation, not abstractions or ether.,. This is the "old wisdom" of
251
the druids.
In*Eumaeus' Joyce takes obvious liberties with the old text, par
ticu larly with the shape and sequence of the Medieval homilies inter
polated into i t . In Ulysses, Stephen/Cormac is accompanied throughout
by Bloom/Mananaan, and the lessons on t h r if t and false models for ar
tis tic aspirations are presented without mystery or suspense. Poldy
juxtaposes Stephen's imprudence with Corley, a more-than-thriftless
young chief, with "Everyone according to his needs and everyone ac
cording to his deeds" (p. 619), and exposes the false model Mulligan
directly as an untrustworthy "guide, philosopher, and friend" (p. 620).
The somewhat tired didacticism of Bloom's lessons are well matched to
the monkish overtones inserted into the old text. But the core of the
legend— its ancient druid riddle— is played out with the same incre
mental suspense of the original: the symbols revitalized through
Joyce's fresh handling of .old materials. Joyce is s t ill concealing
Bloom's identity in an adroit blending of his Homeric and Celtic paral
le ls , sumultaneously ringing many variations on the themes of trust
and discernment. In the cabman's shelter everyone may or may not be
who they seem, and the issues of recognition and truth are explored in
exhaustive (and exhausted) d etail. The proprietor is "said to be the
once-famous Skin-the-goat . . . though [Bloom] wouldn't vouch for the
actual facts, which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth
in" (p. 621). An exchange between Stephen and his unknown guide
(Stephen alone, in the novel, never asks, or apparently wonders, who
252
Bloom i_s) turns the theme toward the realm of art and language:
"Sounds are impostures . . . what's in a name?" To which Bloom re
plies "Yes, to be sure . . . . our name was changed too" (pp. 622-623).
as indeed the names of the old Danaan gods and their identities have
been beclouded, transposed into the Sidh and fin a lly the diminutive
modern 'fa ire s .'
But Leopold's dogged penchant for truth has certainly not been
altered as the wearisome struggle with his recalcitrant charge con
tinues: "Mr. Bloom . . . turned over the card . . . having detected a
discrepancy between his name . . . and the fic titio u s addressee of the
missive which made him nourish som e suspicion of our friend's bona
fides . . . " There is more in a name, in sounds, perhaps, than Stephen
is yet ready to accept. Bloom's own bona fides are hinted in "Wicklow
. . . an ideal neighborhood for elderly wheelmen" (p. 680, emphasis
mine) and more vigorously in his contemplation of the sea's impor- :
tance— "Suffice i t to say . . . i t covered fu lly three fourths . . .
and he fu lly realized accordingly what i t meant, to rule the waves"
(p. 630). This leads directly into a contemplative variation on "The
Two Worlds," a permutation of Mananaan's 'Bran sees/I see' song:
". . . he had remarked a superannuated old salt . . . seated near the
. . . sea . . . staring quite obliviously at i t and at him, dreaming
of fresh woods and pastures new as someone, somewhere sings." Amidst
all the recombinant ambiguities of this passage, the most striking is
a Mananaan very weary indeed, sojourning so long in the harsh world
253
of men, so far in time and space from his origins, that he can scarce
ly remember his own song. S till he struggles bravely on, an untutored
l i t t l e ad m an countering a prize-winning college graduate's view of
the soul with the test of physiological pragmatism: ". . . in t e lli
gence, the brainpower as distinct from any outside object . . . I
believe in that myself because i t has been explained by competent m en
as the convolutions of the grey matter" (p. 633). There is, though,
a very sly twist to Bloom's championing of the Celtic attitude toward
ultimate knowledge: " . . . the same applies to the laws, for example,
of far-reaching natural phenomena such as e lectricity" seems to deny
the concept of Thor Hammer-hurler, Zeus, and the ultimate sky-god,
Jehovah. He adds, however, "But it 's a horse of quite another colour
to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God" (p. 634).
The m u ltip lic ity .o f ironies here li f t s the discourse momentarily out
of its deliberately exhausted style with a b rie f sparkle of fun. Epona,
or 'Macha as she is called' most certainly is_ a 'horse of another co
lor' compared to the vindictive father-gods of the sky. And her de
piction throughout Celtic mythology is certainly intensely natural,
consistently animal in form. O n the other hand, the Mare-god is as
well super-natural, for she is immortal (though at the moment apparent
ly dead and buried).
Unfortunately, the target of all this craft is at the moment a l
together unequal to i t , and one may wonder why the sea-god, weary as
he is , does not simply give up on his unpromising target--whose surly
254
response to the proffered Land of Promise is a rude "Count m e out"
(p. 644). I t would seem perfectly just to dismiss the world of m en
for good and, as he has contemplated throughout the day, fade forever
from the scene. Stephen has already invited him to be "just" before
he:-is, "generous;" and indeed, Bloom contemplates that very thing yet
again as he thinks of Parnell's fate—and the fate of a ll those who
have cared about Ireland: ". . . he thought a return highly inadvisable,
all things considered." Then why has Mananaan come back? The answer
is immediate and poignant: like the tide its e lf responding to the
"naked wom an shining in her courts" who draws "a to il of water"— "You
had to come back - that haunting sense kind of drew you - to show the
A
understudy in the t i t l e role how to" (p. 649). But "understudy" and
"how to" diverge substantially from their Homeric counterparts. Clear
ly Bloom has not come back to show Stephen how to take revenge,to k ill
men. No Athena w ill step forward to reinvest this Odysseus with a
powerful warrior's body. Instead, when Stephen takes Bloom's arm
la te r, i t is "uncertainly, because he thought he fe lt a strange kind of
flesh of a different m an approach him, sinewless and wobbly and a ll
that"'(p. 660). A substance that is not quite flesh or fish. Stephen
is now the chosen understudy of Cormac Mac Art, and while truth-dis
cerning remains the subject of both the Homerictand Joycean 'Eumaeus1,
the most important truth discerned here is that (unpromising as he m ay
appear to us) Mananaan perceives that Stephen is the f i t inheritor of
the Branch and Cup. Mananaan has come to show him the "how to" of
255
Druidic art.
Joyce adds a final metaphoric variation on truth-discerning as
Bloom and Stephen leave the cabman's shelter: their passage is tem
porarily blocked by an old horse dragging a sweeper. As Richard
Ellmann has noted, the closing chapters of Ulysses are marked by an
aura of old age: this quality reaches beyond the surface realism of
the oldness of the day and the encroaching mortal age of the p a rtic i
pants—and into the 'bronze by gold' issue of ages in space and time.
I t symbolizes the old age of the Celtic gods as w ell, in Bloom's ex
haustion and our sense that he has travelled almost too far to be any
longer effective. The horse which interrupts the men's progress is an
apt figuration of the state of the chief elder god of the Celts in
Dublin, 1904. "Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth anything
like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near, so
that i t seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh"
(p. 662). Joyce never allows his text to stray too long from the pre
sence of the horse--here, in contrast to the great Epona and her re
incarnation, the unbridled Maeve of Connaught, this horse appears a
very pathetic relic indeed, reduced to the v ile s t of servitude.
"Nothing is beyond the art of man," however, contains a hint of pro
mise as well as condemnation; as does the fact that this figure from
such great distance in time and space seems suddenly "quite near" and
"new" again. The apparition of this vestigial Epona and its driver
are not what they seem. As Bloom's re-invigorated mind schemes with
256
plans for Stephen, "The horse, having reached the end of his tether,
so to speak, halted" and deposits in the road "three smoking globes of
turds." Nothing could provide more intense contrast to the ethereal
view of a rt, or rebuttal to the ethereal Holy Trinity of Christianized
Ireland, than the blunt, mute, physical declaration of the horse. I t
is a vivid reversal of the nymph of 'C irce'. Joyce extends the meta
phoric contrast, drawing i t out slowly to emphasize the significance of
his image: "And humanely his driver waited t i l l he (or she) had ended,
patient in his scythed car" (p. 665, emphasis mine). Continually.re
aligning our perceptions of 'truth' Joyce now gives us two new hidden
truths to discern: the apparently broken-down old horse contains the
possibility of being the Horse--female; and the driver is suddenly
not the master of the horse's creation, but the patient servant in
stead. But Joyce is not quite done with his lesson: as Bloom, "pro
fitin g by the contretemps," leads Stephen away, the driver, never
saying "a word, good, bad, or indifferent," silently "looked after
their lowbacked car." Joyce ita lic ize s the closing phrase for empha
sis. While for the reader (or any Dubliner who might be about) Bloom
and Stephen appear on foot, this driver alone, despite Mananaan's magic
mist, invisible cloak, and all the rest, can perceive that Bloom and
Stephen are fin a lly in the chariot. In one stroke, Joyce allows us to
discern two simultaneous truths—that Bloom is definitely Mananaan,
and that the vestigial Epona and her mysterious driver s t ill have for
midable powers even in these weary twentieth-century Dublin streets.
257,
In this episode of nerves, Joyce has struck the most v ita l.
This ends the chapter of truth-discerning; but i f , as Joyce once
stated, "Beauty the splendor of truth, is a gracious presence when the
imagination, contemplates intensely the truth of its own being or the
22
visible world," his doctrine is about to undergo its severest test.
As Bloom and Stephen accelerate toward the land" wherein there is
naught save truth," truth is about to be presented lite r a lly in its
'bare bones'—without amelioration of art to flesh i t out. Walton
Litz has provided som e valuable insights into the style of 'Ithaca'
with his discussion of Joyce's "verismo" and "idealismo" as technical
terms in a "contemporary c ritic a l debate on the valid ity of the 're-
23
a lis tic ' novel." In addition to the contemporary arguments of "ver-
ism" as contrasted to idealism that Litz cites, Joyce could reach back
to two very ancient Celtic precepts of art to influence his skeletal
's c ie n tific ' style in 'Ithaca! 1 The fir s t of these was noticed by
Jubainville in his study of the ancients' attitude toward veracity in
art. Jubainville repeatedly stresses the Celtic myth-maker's insis- -
tence on the verification of a fiction by an 'eye-witness' or by som e
plausible explanation of how the tale was inherited. By way of com
parison he comments:
W hen Hesiod . . . . relates the history of the three
f ir s t races that inhabited the earth . . . each of
which had perished before the creation of the other
. . . he did not stop to enquire how the memory of
these races and their history could have come down
to him. In the poetical domain of mythology a
2581
a Greek was untrammelled byany such consideration.
The Irish , however, took a more serious view of
the matter. 24
Indeed, as readers of Celtic materials soon notice, the ancient Celtic
a rtis t, bound by a religious scruple to speak truth, conscientiously
provided links of p la u s ib ility —or at least possibility—to physical
phenomena; the lengthy explanation of a 'survivor* to te ll the tale,
or often tedious reference to authority of older texts (as we see in
practice in the older editions of Keating and his commentaries).
Probably the most obvious example of this 'test of veracity' is the
lengthy preamble to The Tain; "How the Tain B o Cuailnge was Found
Again"—a document which defends the correctness of the present order
25
of the text as having been dictated by the eye-witness Fergus himself. “
Moreover, for the ancient Celtic a rtis t, the wildest imaginative
flights are firmly rooted in observable phenomena—they are rarely
vague, disembodied, or gratuitous. Cuchulain's distortion, the graphic
change of each body part, the intensification of his body temperature,
the steps taken to 'cool him' a fter each spasm, are anything but nebu
lous. In the same way, Mananaan's kingdom is far more graspable in
physical terms—the 'forest' of sea-kelp, the solidity of the silver
fortress and its white wing thatch—than is, say the Christian heaven.
I f we consider for a moment the d iffic u ltie s encountered by Milton in
presenting the Christian heaven, we can grasp at once the secret of the
Celtic a rtis t's craft. Ironically, the 1iterature most often described
as the ultimately "imaginative" and ethereal is probably the most firm!)
259-
anchored in physical concreteness.
But the stripped scientific style of 'Ithaca' has another basis
as well: i t reaches back to the dim period when "art" and "science"
were identical concepts for the Celtic priesthood— -when art was the
only science. As Jubainville relates:
. . . the fi1e Amergin chanted a poem in honour of the
science which rendered him superior to the gods in power,
though i t came originally from them; he sang the praise
of that marvellous science which was to give the sons
of Mile victory over the Tuatha de Danaan. This divine
science, indeed, penetrating the secrets of nature, dis
covering her laws, and mastering her hidden forces, was
according to the tenets of cel tic philosophy, a being
identical with these forces themselves, with the visible
and material world; and to possess this science was to
possess nature in her entirety.
"I am," said Amergin, "the wind which blows over the sea;
I am the wave of the Ocean;
I am the murmur of the billows;
I am the ox of the seven combats;
I am the vulture upon the rock;
I am a tear of the sun;
I am the fairest of the plants;
I am a wild boar in valour;
I am a salmon in the water;
I am a lake in the plain;
I am a word of science;
I am the spear-point that gives battle;
I am the god who creates or forms in the head (of Man)
the fir e (of. thought);.
W ho is i t that enlightens the assembly . . .
W ho te lle th the ages of the m oon . . .
W ho showeth the place where the sun goes to rest?" ( i f
not the f il e , adds another gloss)
. . . there is no doubt as to the meaning: , the f ile is the
word of science, he is the god who gives m an the fire of
thought; and as science is not distinct from its object,
as God and nature are but one, the being of the f ile is
260
mingled with the winds and the waves, the wild animals,
and the warrior's arms . . . the f ile is the personification
of science, and . . . Science is Being its e lf . . . The f ile
. . . in w hom science . . .t h e divine idea, is manifested,
and who thus becomes the personification of that idea, can
. . . proclaim himself identical with the one universal
being of whom all other beings are but appearances . . . 2 5
His own existence is confounded with that of these beings.
While some objections to Jubainville's interpretation can be
mounted, specifically that the f ile is not asserting himself as a god,
but that god's voice is speaking through the medium of the f i l e , the
basic understanding of the Celtic meaning of "science" is a sound one.
Clearly, St. Patrick well understood this relationship of god, poet,
and a rt, when he prayed to the Christian god to protect him " ... . a-
gainst the sorcery of wom en and smiths and druids, against a ll science
that loseth the soul of man."^
I t is fittin g , then, as we reach the core of Stephen's quest,
that the "land where there is naught save truth" be reflected in a
language which is the modality of empirical inquiry and validation.
Here Bloom's comic proclivity for science acquires a new dimension—
the ancient fusion of a ll science in a rt. W e are back in time and
space before the 'uncreation' of the druid's power—before the disso
lution of the poet-priests' art into a modern diversification of dis
ciplines. So, stripped as the language of 'Ithaca' is, i t is not di
vorced from art: as we well know, Bloom is "a cultured allroundman
. . . There's a touch of the a rtis t about old Bloom." Joyce estab
lishes a swift compendium of the novel's major questions— particularly
261
those touching Celtic traditions: Bloom and Stephen discuss, am ong
other things, music, lite ra tu re , Ireland, Dublin, the Rom an church,
ecclesiastical celibacy, the study of m edicine-all matters, as we
have seen, of significance to the role of druid and/or to the disin
tegration of that office. Predictably, both prefer music and both are
resistant to "many orthodox religions, national, social, and ethical
doctrines" (p. 6 6 6 ). Many— but not quite a ll. Driving the point a
b it harder, Joyce allows Bloom to "tacitly" reject Stephen's "views on
the eternal affirmation of the s p irit of m an in lite ra tu re ." Pre
sumably, from Bloom/Mananaan's point of view, Stephen has a great deal
to learn yet about the s p irit of man. Quickly, the author juxtaposes
his important clues for this episode—the loss of the pagan vision to
Christianity through Patrick, here a descendant of Odysseus, and the
all-important presence in this chapter of Cormac Mac Art. Lastly, the
matutinal cloud that has unconsciously connected Stephen and Bloom (in
both parallax and parallel) throughout the day is re-described as "no
bigger than a woman' s hand" (p. 667, emphasis mine).
A great deal has already been written about Bloom's fa ll and rise
in the areaway, and while that is certainly an important positive sym
bol, i t is vital not to overlook the striking of the match and the
kindling of the "high flame." In 'Circe1, Bloom retrieved a packet of
matches for Stephen, receiving a “ 'Lucifer. Thanks."—certainly a
faulty recognition appropriate in 'Circe' (p.* 558). But the style
262
in 'Ithaca' allows Joyce to emphasize a connection not; satisfiable by
the meager association in 'Circe': after Bloom enters the kitchen,
he "ignited a lucifer match by friction" while Stephen, s t ill outside,
perceives a "discreet succession of images"—Bloom regulating the gas-
je t and then lighting a candle. W hy is the match-lighting so elabor
rated? Most probably, because i t is meant to take the reader's mind
back across the book to 'Aeolus.' There, in the midst of J.J. O'Mol-
loy's windy rendition of Tyler's speech, an unidentified first-person
voice appears out of nowhere with "I have often thought since on look
ing back over that strange time that i t was that small act, triv ia l in
its e lf, that striking of that match, that determined the whole a fte r
course of both our lives" (p. 140). I t is only in 'Ith aca', when we
see the sharply etched scene in Bloom's striking of the match, that we
recall the disembodied voice abruptly intruding in 'Aeolus.' W ho was
speaking? Not Stephen—he doesn't speak that way in 'Aeolus.' Cer
tainly not Lehehan--he's not capable of such diction. But i f i t is not
the voice of Stephen then, i t is suggestively the voice of Stephen
now—or more succinctly, i t is the voice in hindsight of the experien-
cer of all that has happened: the voice of the author of Ulysses who
knew from the beginning of the book where he intended to take his
readers (and his characters), and who only now permits the readers to
realize it : that the effect of that striking of that match was to be
the cause of the whole cycle of the novel's existence.
263
But now Stephen enters Bloom's kitchen, and the parallel to
"Cormac's Adventures" becomes very obvious—at least, insofar as any
thing in Joyce's writings can be said to be obvious. As in the legend,
the kitchen fire is kindled (though ritual bathing is refused) and i f
we s t ill entertain any doubts as to Bloom's mythic identity, the in
credible apostrophe to water, water sources, and water power is ela
borated:
What.in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of
water, watercarrier . . . admire? Its univer
sa lity its democratic equality and constancy to
its nature . . . its unplumbed profundity . . .
its properties for cleansing, quenching th irs t
and f ir e , nourishing vegetation: its in f a l l i
b ility as paradigm and paragon . . . its ubiquity
in constituting 90% of the hum an body . . .
(pp. 671-672).
Bloom's identity as the sea-god gives what would otherwise be an
exhaustive parody of bardic catalogue a unique poignance: a great
s p irit reviewing every marvelous feature of his 'properties.' Like
Mananaan in the Cormac legend, Bloom is graciously careful not to
press his guest too hard: at Stephen's rejection of "aquacities" Bloom
forbears, accepting "The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic
originality of genius"—while Stephen displays like qualities to
Cormac in unknown surroundings: "Confidence in himself, an equal and
opposite power of abandonment and recuperation" (p. 673). And like
his character Bloom, Joyce too forbears pressing too hard. The
events at 7 Eccles Street are not a mirror-image of the Celtic legend,
any more than they are simply a modern-dress parody of the Odyssey.
264-
I In place of the legendary feast, Joyce has devised an intriguing
variation on the pagan enlightenment of Cormac: the mythic feast is
synthesized with the more fam iliar symbolism of Christian communion.
For th is, Joyce found ready to his hand yet one more of those fo rtu i
tous and incredible coincidences that make his fiction more nearly
supernaturalistic than Naturalistic: in this case, the lite ra l exis
tence of a Dublin foodstuff named Epps's soluble cocoa. In a confla
tion of the pagan hospitality r ite with religious symbolism of other
eras, a "satisfied" Bloom prepares a "collation for a gentile." As a
"special hospitality" Bloom pointedly does not drink from his unique
cup; instead, he democratically f i l l s two identical cups, serving
"extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself" the
added ingredient of Molly's cream. Through Joyce's masterful command
of word-play, time and space, mythic and lite ra l worlds fuse in this
all-important passage. But the word-play is not for fun: The word
"serious" is emphasized as the guest .acknowledges the hospitality
"seriously" while they drink "Epps's massproduct, the creature cocoa."
The lite ra l nam e Epps's allows Joyce to allude to the Mare-god Epona
openly, reinforcing the religious aspect through "massproduct," the
pagan animal associations with "creature."
The communion scene serves a ll levels of the novel. For those
readers tracing the humanistic and/or Viconian facets, Epps's mass
product unites Stephen, Bloom, and Molly {though the emphasized addition
of her cream) as a humanistic trin ity more promising of fecundity than
the all-male theological counterpart. O n the Homeric level, too, the
principals seem to be approaching re-unification and completion. In
its Celtic dimension, much of the novel seems to be resolved insofar
as Mananaan has at last succeeded in getting his young Cormac to drink
from his fountain, as i t were. He has gently achieved the compatibi
lit y of aquacity with the originality of genius. In the abstract, at
least, we might hopefully expect that Stephen w ill write no more v il-
lanelle's like "Art thou real m y Ideal?"—or find i t necessary to en
gage in defensive sophistries like the Shakespeare argument. But the
"collation for a gentile" predominantly made up of Bloom's tap-water
does not make an instant convert of that gentile: Stephen has drunk
from Mananaan's fountain, true, but that scarcely makes him a bona
fide ollamh f i l e —while he has drunk from Mananaan's waters, he has not
completed the tru th -te llin g test. Mananaan is not, after a ll, the god
of Art proper—that is the Mare-god's province. Mananaan presides only
over truth in a rt, not beauty. The distinction is made clear in :
Bloom's comparison of the "pleasures derived from literatu re of iob
struction rather than of amusement:" Poldy has found Shakespeare's
works less satisfactory as solutions to "problems"—while his ow n
lite ra ry efforts display nicely the distinction between the sea-god's
powers and the Mare-god's (pp. 678-679).
The completion of Stephen's in itia tio n begins after sharing the
auspicious communion cup—as he and Bloom merge closer and closer to
"quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations of concealed identities"
266
(p. 689), and Stephen hears at last "in a profound ancient male un
fam iliar melody the accumulation of the past." Strangely, the (at
le a s t.titu la ry ) Jewish host encourages his guest.to sing an anti-Semi
tic Medieval song here, in his own kitchen. W hy does Bloom instigate
this performance of a song surely not pleasing for him to hear? And
he Is insistent— the text makes that quite clear:
Did the host encourage his guest . . . Reassuringly,
their place where none could hear them talk being
secluded, reassured, the decocted beverage . . .
having been consumed (p. 690).
This is 'testing the waters' in a very special way--a way for Bloom to
see whether Stephen w ill back away from absolute candor and trust into
a hypocritical social demurrer (they have avoided an open declaration
of their racial difference up to now),;or whether he w ill honestly
sing,..in the midst of the Jew's kitchen, a traditional anti-Semitic
song. I t is equivalent to Cormac's choosing to say in Mananaan's k it
chen that he is a potentially hostile intruder. Stephen complies at
once, and though the gloss Stephen gives the piece saddens Bloom, we
find that, as he is a "secret in fid e l," the song does not engender any
resentment of Stephen. I t would seem that Stephen has passed the test,
for Bloom promptly invites Stephen tostay, proposes Ita lia n lessons
for Molly, singing lessons for Stephen, and entertains the possibility
of "a.:permanent eventuality of reconciliatory union between a school
fellow and a jew's daughter . . . because the way to the daughter led
through the mother, the way to mother through daughter" (p. 695).
267
O n the hum an level, while they are a touching reminder of how the
world ought to operate—free of prejudice and isolationism— Poldy's
dreams and schemes are clearly hopeless: on the symbolic Celtic level
they are prophetic. Given that Macha is Mananaan's daughter, and
further that Macha is simply the later Ulster cycle version of the more
ancient Danu or Epona—in a ll cases the Mare-god of Art, this sea-god's
ruminations on a liaison between Stephen and mother or daughter or both
seems an augury of Stephen’ s future as ollamh f i l e —a metempsychosis of
Cormac. But then, in a sharp reversal of our expectations, Stephen
gratefully and amicably refuses Bloom/Mananaan’s offer of asylum. O n
all levels of the novel--the humanistic family, the theologically
fecund tr in ity , and particularly the Homeric father/son/birthright
paradigms--our desire for reconciliation, like Poldy's, seems shattered
by Stephen's denial. The departure from the Homeric pattern is es
pecially sharp; so pointed, in fact, that a reading of the entire
novel as b itte r parody of the Homeric ideals seems ju s tifie d . Father
and son, birthright and justice, a ll is sundered in the modern world,
Joyce seems to be saying. When, however, we are reading on the Celtic
level of the novel, the solution proposed by Bloom must necessarily be
rejected. F irs t, such a solution would cheapen Joyce's a rt, would re
duce to a creaky antiquated allegorical mode the intricate contrapuntal
form he has created. Moreover, such a solution would be unfaithful to
his Celtic model. While we know that Mananaan readily shares his
wife with sojourners to Mag Mell, there is a 'catch' to the perfect
268
hospitality, bliss, and bounty of the Land of Promise. Mortals who
stay with Mananaan overlong, however blissful their sojourn may be,
discover that time stands s t ill in Mag M ell, and shortly they are
barred forever from returning to the world of men. Bran discovered
this truth too late when, returning to Ireland, he found that men knew
him only as an ancient legend: unbelieving, one of his followers leaps
onto the shore and immediately turns to dust. Oisin, Finn's son, re
turning from Mananaan's kingdom in what he supposes is his prime, makes -
the same error— he dismounts from his magic steed and instantly ". . .
28
I was le ft of strength bereft/A helpless, hopeless blind old man!"
Even. Cuchulain, brief though his stay is, almost loses his mortal life
on returning. Clocks don't work at 7 Eccles Street—and with good
reason. Muir long ago sensed this 'truth' about Bloom with "Bloom's
floating fancies te ll us a great deal about himself, but they do not
29
make time appear to flow." Druid doctrines of the re la tiv ity of
time, matter, and identity form a confluence with a nearly Einsteinian
re la tiv ity of time and space in Joyce's twentieth-century novel as
Stephen takes his leave of the Land of Promise. And he must leave,
i f he is to f u l f il l the promise of a metempsychosis as Cormac: re
turning truth to the world of m en is his racial mission—the whole
reason for Mananaan's luring him to the Land of Promise.
Leaving 7 Eccles Street, while i t adumbrates the Homeric paradigm,
f u lf ills the C eltic—even though Stephen does not carry away a lite ra l
gold cup of truth-discerning. Instead, he exits carrying his
269
ashplant—certainly a branch--surmounted by his "diaconal" hat. Step
ping into the garden, the characters are confronted with what seems a
final variant allusion to Mag M e ll--its eternal Tree of Life, here
"The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fru it" (p. 698).
Joyce's own comments, that in the abstract catechism of 'Ithaca' "not
only w ill the reader know everything in the baldest coldest way, but
Bloom and Stephen thereby become heavenly bodies, wanderers like the
30
stare at which they gaze," have triggered much speculation that
Ithaca therefore demonstrates the characters' fa ilu re to unite. Indeed,
b rie fly , i t does not seem to place them under the aegis of the Yeatsian
"W ho Goes with Fergus" in which the dispossessed Fergus rules over "all
dishevelled wandering stars." But the momentary 'heavenly body' fate
of the characters is fraught with Joycean ironies. Of course, in the
sense they have assumed timeless, mythic id en tities, they do possess
'heavenly bodies' on the punning level. But chilling as Bloom's cog
itation on the immensity of in terstellar space is , the truth-discerner
is not long in rejecting the traditional heaven of the patriarchs—nor
in detecting the romantic incorrectness of its presentation. As in
his response to the lure of a resurrected Holy Land in 'Calypso',
Bloom, in the bald manner of a Druid astronomer concludes "That i t was
not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a heaven-
man. That i t was a Utopia [here a lite ra l no-place] . . . a past which
possibly had ceased to exist" before either himself or Stephen had been
born (p. 701). The ethereal receives another blow from a Celtic vision
270
which traditionally seeks and fin d s its gods in earth and water, animal
life and the terrestrial concerns of men. There are no sky-gods in the
Celtic pantheon: for Celts, the heavens provided a way of measuring
time and calculating ritual dates; i t was an instrument, not a per
sonified power.
Connected to art as he is, Bloom/Mananaan readily acknowledges the
great esthetic value of the heavens; but amusingly he returns swiftly
to his own 'element'—a characteristic tolerant balancing of "v e rifi
able intuitions" against "fallacious analogy"—told out in water ima
gery: "lake of dreams," "sea of rains," "gulf of dews," and most sig
nificant "ocean of fecundity." In the last respect, the sky is a pale
analogy indeed to the real ocean. What pulls Bloom back so sw iftly to
earth is the pmximity of the m oon to Molly's window-light, and i f w e
do not think of i t immediately, Molly herself w ill soon remind us of
the old song "Molly Bawn" which provides in its down-to-earth chorus
a typically Irish attitude toward the mysteries of the stars:
Molly Bawn, why leave m e pining,
All lonely waiting here for you -
While the stars above are brightly shining,
Because they've nothing else to do.
The stars are beautiful, but purposeless, powerless: the "heaventree"
is definitely not M ag Mell's Tree of Life, nor, despite this momentary
diversion, are Stephen/Cormac and Bloom/Mananaan purposeless or power
less. To counterbalance the chilling s te r ility of the s tella r imagery,
Joyce provides abundant reassurance of his characters' fru itfu l .7
271
a rtis tic union. The most obvious 'earthy' one is of course the mutual
urination of the men—one of the most ancient and unchanging Celtic
emblems of prevailing: in Celtic terms, these two are v ita l—they will
f u l f i l l their promise. Another is the unseen but very much f e lt pre
sence of Molly herself, a luminous sign conjoined with the attributes
of the moon—ancient, constant, potent even over the sea—yet in this
case far more emphatic in her 'animal magnetism' than in lunar remote
ness. Stephen's 'choseness' is hinted, too, in the "celestial sign"
witnessed by the paii— a shooting star reminding us of the name Cormae
gave to the ancient Mare-god, "Fiery Arrow."
But perhaps the most convincing and reassuring event of this
modern-dress encounter in the Land of Promise is on the irreducible hu
m an level Joyce has maintained throughout his skeleton episode. I f in
the Homeric sense the encounter refuses to yield the expected fathcr-
son configuration, in the Celtic sense the two men achieve the alliance
of Cormac and Mananaan. Bloom has shown Stephen the only ture genero
sity and hospitality he has met in Dublin a ll day. Stephen has been
given an opportunity to be unguardedly truthful in a non-combative at
mosphere: he has encountered at last a different kind of maleness,
neither demanding nor threatening. While we know that Bloom's 'go-
ahead' schemes for Stephen—the Italian lessons, the intellectual tete-
a-tetes, the singing soirees—w ill never m aterialize, i t really doesn't
matter. Stephen has drunk from the cup of human generosity; he has
been shown that m en can be kind. I t is, apparently, all the truth he
272
needs. His fostering is complete, and the fosterer, listening to Ste
phen's departure, hears "The double reverberation of retreating feet on
the heavenborn earth, the double vibration of a jew's harp in the re
sonant lane" (p. 704). Thus Joyce merges once more Bloom's Celtic-
Hebraic identity: Stephen's a rt, his 'harp' is clearly marked with
Bloom's influence. Alone, he is retracing Cormac's footsteps—a "dou
ble reverberation."
Alone also, Bloom for one final moment surrenders himself to "The
cold of in terstellar space" but turns from n u llity , as from death in
'Hades', back to lif e and a warm bed; to new dreams of Flowerville.
Bloom moves fin a lly from envy and jealousy through abnegation to equa
nimity (the inevitable state of both water and Mananaan) arriving at
last at the core, the focus, the one great goal of his kingdom— "the
land of promise of adipose posterior female hemispheres . . (p. 734).
Earthward, as befits the Celtic male—especially the Celtic male dei- —
ty—he returns to an acknowledgement of the female principle, without
which his existence would be as useless as the stars. As Odysseus he
is eclipsed; as the mortal Bloom he is in the w om b of Time; as
Mananaan he is "Where?" At the focal point of the Celtic universe.
273
Notes
^ E.MT Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927; rpt. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, & World), p. 121.
Darcy O'Brien, The Conscience of James Joyce (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 177.
3
Frank Budgen, as quoted in Ellmann's James Joyce, p. 449.
4
See Fr. Robert Boyle, S. J ., "Penelope," in James Joyce s
Ulysses, ed. Clive Hart and David Hayman (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977), pp. 412, 420.
5
Making of Ulysses, p. 105.
6 Social History, I , 259-260.
7 P.W. Joyce, loc. c it.
Q
P.W. Joyce, loc. c it.
9
Golden Treasury, p. 44.
^ Greene's translation is adapted from Van Hamel's 1941 version.
Joyce would have read versions like that of Kuno Meyer in 1895, in
which the undercurrent of Druidical resentment at Christian encroach
ment is more strongly suggested.
274
11
All quotations in this passage are from the Kuno Meyer transla
tion, as reproduced in Cross and SI over, pp. 592-593.
12 Cross and Slover, p. 503.
1 3
Jackson I. Cope, "Sirens," in James Joyce*s Ulysses, ed. Hart
and Hayman, pp. 217-242.
See P.W. Joyce, pp. 445-446.
Cross and Slover, p. 503.
1 fk
The connection between Valerius Maximus and the twins was dis
cussed in Chapter I of this study, p. 35.
^ Edm und Spenser, The Faerie Queene, in Poetical Works, ed. J.C.
Smith and E. De Selincourt (1912; rpt. London: Oxford3Press, 1966),
Book V, Cantos V -V II, 295-310.
^ Letters, I I , 217.
^ Aspects of the Novel, p. 122.
Of)
August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata, in Six Plays of Strindberg,
trans. Elizabeth Sprigge (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1955),
pp. 263-304.
21
Cross and Slover, pp. 504-506.
22 Critical Writings, p. 83.
23 A. Walton L itz, "Ithaca," in James Joyce's Ulysses, ed. Hart
and Hayman, p. 387.
on
Irish Myth Cycle, p. 25.
2R
Kinsella, The Tain, p. 1.
275
Irish Myth Cycle, pp. 136-140.
27
From the Liber Hymnorum, as quoted by Jubainville, op. c i t . ,
p. 175.
pO
Cross and Slover, p. 456.
pQ
Edwin Muir, Structure of the Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
& World, no date), p. 129.
^ Letters, I , 159-160.
276
Chapter V
Penelope, Gea-Tellus, Maeve -
A Metemphsychosis of Female Principles
In a ll of the c ritic a l compendia surrounding Ulysses, no object of
explication or subject of mythic interpretation has proved so elusive
or confounding as Molly Bloom. Stephen in his Telemachus role or his
Hamlet pose, Bloom in his Odysseus mask, or as the Wandering Jew, or
even Christ, have been defined, explored, and possibly over-explicated.
Homeric, B iblical, and other mythic analogues which reveal Joyce's
novel as father-quest have been exhaustively researched and rearranged
in an effo rt to capture once and for a ll the total structural and ,
philosophical meaning of the book. Yet the stubborn fact remains that
this father-quest ends not with a father, but with a mother. I t ends,
moreover, with a mother who appears strangely remote from either son
or father; a mother whom Stephen never sees, and who doesn't see him;
a mother whose great affirmation of lif e goes unheard by either male.
S t i l l , in som e way we rather sense than know, i t is Molly who
encompasses the male-to-male struggle of the epic, and supplies the
fulfillm ent or summation of the entire work—but how? As Penelope,
I l l
Molly offers no satisfactory sense of an ending at a ll. She neither
keeps the citadel inviolate nor welcomes her husband hom e in the tra
ditional fashion. O n this level, Molly is merely confusing, despite
c ritic s who insist on rewriting the text in a vain effo rt to demon
strate that Molly either becomes a proper Penelope to Bloom on the fo l
lowing morning, or a female r ite of passage to Stephen on the following
night. Neither of these traditional symmetries is granted by the au
thor: yet Molly is , by Joyce's own whimsical suggestion, the lock to
the whole meaning of his book, and the reader, along with Stephen,
Bloom, and the rest of the wanderers in Joyce's labyrinth, must some
how gain a purchase on her i f they are to understand the significance
of the journey. Only when we discover the fu ll meaning of Molly's
mixed nature can we decide with any fin a lity whether Joyce meant by
this immense panorama of conflicting symbols to satirize the fragmenta
tion and s te r ility of our w orld^r, contrarily, to demonstrate rebirth
through communion in a humanly fru itfu l encounter. Has Joyce succeeded
in making the modern world "possible for art?"
Thus fa r, we have been tracing, through the Celtic allusions, a
demonstration that Stephen's and Bloom's encounter does contain the
promise of a rtis tic fru itio n —that "nothing is beyond the art of man,"
including the resurrection of a badly shattered racial conscience. I f
the novel ended, as Joyce once suggested i t did, in 'Ithaca?, the
Cormac-Mananaan legend of its e lf might tip the scale toward an ac
ceptance that completion has been achieved: the contrapuntal Homeric
278
and Celtic endings in their very contrast serving to isolate and v a li
date the Celtic meaning. And yet, once Stephen has departed, we cannot
help feeling unsatisfied—cheated of what Frank Kermode has aptly termed
that "sense of an ending," that wholeness provided us not only by the
ancient Homeric world, but by the traditional paradigms of Western l i t
erature. And so Joyce's novel does not end with 'Ith aca', but moves
beyond the structure of the Greek model in every sense to demonstrate
that the art of m an can resurrect out of the dark past the presence of
a powerful s p irit "quite near;" so that i t does, indeed seem "new, a
different grouping of bones and even flesh," In precisely that order,
Joyce moves from the skeletal styleofr1 Ithaca'—the foundation o f:
tru th --to the fleshed-out rhapsodic style of 'Penelope'—the presence
of beauty. The juxtaposition of styles is a restatement in symbolic
imitative form of Joyce's own declaration that "Beauty the splendor of
truth is a gracious presence when the imagination contemplates intense
ly the truth . . ." To underscore, Molly w ill eventually remind us,
"the wom an is beauty of course thats admitted" (p. 753).
In achieving his transition, Joyce provides a clever manipulation
of his Celtic materials. By transposing the "Pillow Talk" 1 domestic
scene which initiates the Tain to the closing moments of his own
'Ith a c a', Joyce shifts the emphasis away from Mananaan's and "Cormac's
Adventures," and rounds back nicely to the larger context of the
Ulster cycle. The inversion is a just one: f ir s t , i t allows the
persona of Ail i l l , Maeve's husband to eclipse Bloom's Mananaan
associations. Mananaan and Fann are important configurations in both
the Ulster cycle and Joyce's novel, but they appear as subordinate
figures in the larger mythic context. To suggest that Molly is only
Fann would be to lim it her scope as severely as to suggest she is only
Penelope. Moreover, the "Pillow Talk" in the Tain—Ail i l l ' s unwise
husbandly attempt to subjugate queen Maeve—triggered an epic war. Its
placement here, as the finale rather than the prelude to the action,
introduces us rather to an exploration than a confrontation with the
great queen god in a ll her many aspects. As Poldy embodies many per
sonae—Odysseus, Mananaan, and fin a lly A i l i l l , so Molly w ill display
aspects of Penelope, Helen, Fann, and Epona: but i t is Maeve of Con
naught who dominates the largest intact portion of the Celtic "scrip
tures": Maeve who w ill fin a lly dominate here, as Joyce allows her to
take shape and gather strength before her eyes in the fu ll flowering of
her physical presence.
A s we move beyond the confines of the Odyssey, we are confronted
with a dramatic s h ift in symbolism, for we discover a Penelope who is a
far greater and more knowledgeable voyager than her Odysseus. I t is
Molly who has seen the mysterious meeting of East and West, and known
the realities of war and empire from the vantage point of a m ilitary
outpost. Molly has conversed with Moor and Spaniard, she has experi
enced the exotic climes that Bloom only dimly imagines. Finally, she
has actually sailed on the wine-dark sea—the Mediterranean. Bloom's
role as voyager through Dublin is placed in an entirely new perspective
when juxtaposed with the wider scope of Molly's movements. Despite.
280,
the arguments of c ritic s , Molly transcends Penelope's role of "staying
at hom e with suitors." She rests, but she has also travelled.
Once the coda begins, Molly transcends not only her Penelope role,
but all that has gone before. She presides, s t ill conscious and moving,
long after a ll the m en have lapsed into quiescence. She seems to en
compass and hold the others—to prevail. In the sexual tr in ity Joyce
has constructed of course she must, logically. All males are contained,
in their beginning, within the female: she is the great outer circle
of the syllogism containing searching son and found father. Then,
through Bloom's confused catalogue of her lovers, Molly is fused as
well to Stephen's "Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a
score of heroes slept" (p. 201). But further—as Richard Ellmann con
templated the ubiquitous horse-imagery of the book he commented that
. . in a way the book it s e lf .. . . was a Trojan horse, parading as
2
a monument, but . . . armed for battle." Ellmann's concept is ex
tremely important, but before we can assess the nature of the battle,
we must deduce the nature of Molly Bloom, and discover what sort of
horse i t is that contains Joyce's sleeping 'heroes.' For beyond logi
cal or lite ra l considerations, as Molly and the coda move beyond the
structure of the Odyssey, the primary configurations of Homef's work—
indeed, the whole patriarchal archetype of familial duty and f u l f i l l
ment— is overwhelmed by the emerging triumphal song of Gaea-Tellus.
The emergence of Molly's Gaea-Tellus aspect was f ir s t traced by
G ilbert, who was fortunate enough to have access not only to Joyce's
2 8 1
schemata, but to the author himself. "Throughout her monologue Mrs.
Bloom makes comparison of her past estate and grandeurs with the p e tti-
3
ness of the Irish scene," says Gilbert, pointing out that in Molly's
past the rock of Gibralter "partakes of the eminence of her father,"Jand
thereby links her to a ll the primordial gigantism imagery of the novel.
Molly cannot remember her age, she never knows what time i t is (not
only clocks, but the watch Bloom gave her fa ils to work at 7 Eccles
Street) she sees her youth "through a mist makes you feel so old," and
remembers the consul at Gibralter "that was there from before the
flood." Most suggestive of a ll is that, for Molly, a mother is "what
I never had." As Gilbert points out, "Gaea, the Earth, was according
to the Greeks the f ir s t being that sprang from Chaos." Gilbert con
cludes,then, that Joyce's Ulysses means to affirm that Nature lives on
in our modern world, forever healing and reproducing, and that the male
world of a rt, of intellection, rests forever secure in those rejuve
nating arms. Joyce's ow n schema offers this key to the book, and w e
know that Gilbert offered this interpretation with Joyce's encourage
ment. Yet, when we try to satisfy our understanding of the symbolic
unity of Ulysses by reading Molly as Gaea-Tellus, we are rewarded with
a maddening multiplication of paradoxes. As Genetrix, Molly generates
nothing so much as contradictions. Irrita tin g ly , even Joyce's key
does not seem to undo the lock; more irrita tin g s t i l l , Mr. Joyce ap
pears to have been aware of that from the beginning, as he taunts us
in 'Proteus'— "Click does the tric k . You find my words dark" (p. 48).
282
Perhaps Joyce's penchant for indirection and deliberate obfuscation de
signed to make the rabblemen think harder fin a lly begins to work ... ‘
against him here. At the least, the clues Joyce provided have led many
sincere critics into a quick-sand of self-cancelling explications, and
nowhere is the effect more obvious than in the work of William York
Tindall. Tindall's explication of Molly demonstrates both the possi
b ilitie s of the Gaea-Tellus symbol, and the limitations of this reading
of Molly's 'meaning.'
In his analysis Tindall declares that "The realization of Molly
Bloom must have had the effect of what Jung calls the reconciling
symbol. Through i t Joyce united Bloom with Stephen or one side of
his nature with the other . . . I f we take Mrs. Bloom and Stephen and
combine them with Mr. Bloom we compose something like ideal man. Mrs.
Bloom is his female flesh, Stephen his male in te lle c t and.imagination,
4
and Mr. Bloom all that lies between these extremes." This is a good
insight, for undoubtedly the realization of a reconciling symbol was as
necessary to Joyce's psychological and a rtis tic fru ition as i t is to
his character Stephen's. Behind Stephen's Agenbite of Inwit and his
frantic resistance=to a haunting mother, a m ad Ita lia n Queen, and the
political demands of contemporary mother Ireland, we can see Joyce's
own struggle to resolve the entire panorama of responsibility conflicts
through som e ultimate male-female paradigm. Joyce apparently found the
beginnings of his own reconciliation in Nora. The discovery of a .
strong and independent wom an who could live with her ow n choices and
283’ •
thereby absolve her mate from responsibility-ginlt seems to have been a
great awakening for Joyce, and he celebrated i t in his art by fixing
the one eternal day of Ulysses on the day he met Nora Barnacle.
Throughout his work Joyce moves steadily toward an affirmation of
a powerful female principle, and toward a reinstatement of a balanced
fe r tile trin ity over the abstract religious trin ity which had sup
planted the former in the West. Over and over Joyce attacks the para
dox of the all-male Christian Trinity and its belatedly adopted virgin
substitute for the female principle. In Ulysses the petrified male
triangle and its disconnected Virgin are castigated in the "Ballad of
Joking Jesus," in Bloom's shuddering "God wants blood victim," and in
the sugar-sticky portrait of Gerty MacDowell. 'Nausicaa' is Joyce's
most biting attack on Virgin ideality: i t is the societal or theolo
gical counterpart to the esthetic philosophy of the Circean nymph.
Gerty's pathetic fantasies, counterpointed by the chant to the Virgin
and the burlesqued domesticity of the "girl chums," depicts the dis
location of healthy male and female relationships by religious id e a li
ty. The seeds of shame and g u ilt produced by unnatural abstract ideals
are shown here: one has no doubt that these slavish girls w ill grow
either into rebellious and dangerous victims, (as we see in Cissy
la te r) or into haunting martyred mothers like Stephen's, in both cases
paralyzing their males with an inescapable burden of responsibi1it y ,
failure,~>and g u ilt. Joyce has pointedly made Gerty a cripple--his
symbolic condemnation of Ireland's imported religion.
284
However, neither Joyce's personal resolutions, not the resolution of
the conflicts in his big novel, can be solved by simplyiintoning "
"flesh" or "elemental trin ity ." W e cannot understand Molly's reconci
ling function in the novel until we reconcile the contradictions with
in her created character, and this Tindall's approach fa ils to do. In
reading Molly as female flesh, Tindall relies too heavily on the sche
m a and ignores the rich and complex portrait offered by the text.
Tindall's equation of Molly with Gaea-Tellus is over-simplified, as his
acceptance of this aspect of Molly as her only aspect.
Ignoring Joyce's elaborately synthesized p o rtra it, Tindall ob
serves, "There are masculine elements in most women, but none in Mrs.
Bloom. Like the cat, to which Joyce compares her, she has been cre
ated out of feminine elements . . . As fundamental and symbolic as her
cat. she appears as Gea-Tellus or earth-earth, 'fu lfille d , recumbent,
5
big with seed.' But its redundancy the name expresses her meaning."
Ironically, Tindall's arbitrary and traditional patriarchal divisions
of male and female tra its betray the very attitude and beliefs that
Joyce satirizes so mercilessly in Ulysses. Tindall tends to make the
same assumptions about Molly that (on his purely hum an level) Poldy
himself does—assumptions which, in the book, lie close to tragedy and
threaten to seal m an and wife o ff from each other forever. These
stereotyped concepts of what male and female mean are at odds with
Joyce's concepts, and Tindall's evaluation is ultimately at cross
purposes with the text.
285
F irst, i t is not Joyce but Poldy who associates both Molly and
M illy with his cat. Molly in fact dislikes the cat "always licking and
lecking," and is made uneasy by the cat's stare. Moreover, she detests
the 'female' tra its symbolized by cats— "I hate their claws." Molly is
a harsh judge, as well as victim, of female cattiness like Edy Board-
man's, and she appears to scorn cruelty and games of cat-and-mouse as
she scorns the sado-masochism of Fair Tyrants, "theres nothing for a
wom an in that." To be sure, Molly toys with the notion of revenging
herself on Poldy by flaunting the a ffa ir —as we have seen him toy with
the idea of revenge in 'Sirens' (Poldy, in fact, seems more furtive and
cat-like in his conduct of the Martha Clifford a ffa ir, though his e f
forts at concealment have gone for nought). But both characters ul
timately reject such empty games; neither is feline in Tindall's sense.
Paradoxically, Molly is w illing to acknowledge dog-Tike attributes in
women— "were all bitches," and "snappish"—an inversion of the Celtic
elements which w ill be discussed a b it la te r. Unlike the sly and tidy
cat, however, Molly neither attacks Bloom with an account of her a ffa ir
nor hides the evidence of i t . Like Fann or Maeve herself, Molly casu
a lly allows her husband to cope as best he may with the obvious facts
of the matter.
But more to the point, i f Molly is exclusively "feminine elements,"
how are we to explain her longing to mount som e beautiful women, or her
aggressive and calculating management of her vocal career, her home,
286
her a ffa ir with Boylan? What are we to make of Molly's peculiar swag
gering pride in her m ilitary heritage, "soldier's daughter am I," and
her association of herself with the male heroic trappings of the m ili
tary funeral? Ignoring these conflicts, Tindall approvingly notes that
Molly is "in bed where she belongs," a great amorphous f e r t ilit y em
blem. "As for in te lle c t, she has none." Here Tindall echoes Bloom's
al1-too-traditional estimation of Molly in the catechism (what shall
we do with our wives?) as a sedentary unmotivated female to be taken
care of, entertained with bezique, and hopefully improved by evening
classes. I t is a bad mistake to confuse in te lle c t with stark in te l
lectual ism, or to rely much on Poldy's a b ility to judge in te lle c t, once
Joyce has shifted the^emphasis of his symbolic character from Mananaan
to Ail i l l . W hen Molly at last gets a chance to speak, we get quite a
different picture of the mind that Bloom would "improve."
Molly is painfully aware of her lack of education, and regrets
that Bloom has sent M illy away as a photographer's apprentice instead
of to a regular school "where shed have to learn not like me." More
over, i t is Bloom's perverse idea to bring Molly only smutty books,
and within the lim its of her human understanding i t is ’ hardly sur
prising that she can't think of any title s to request besides "another
Paul de Kock." I f Bloom really wanted to help her he might follow the
example of Molly's girlhood friend Hester, who brought Molly quite a
different sort of reading matter, which Molly seems to have read and
enjoyed. She remembers the title s and authors quite clearly— in
28Z
contrast to Bloom, who at one point recalls Eugene Stratton as one of
Molly's lovers. Molly once read Bui war Lytton's Eugene Aram, the works
of Wilke Collins, East Lynn and others by Mrs. Wood. Hardly a lis t to
impress Stephen, but s t ill a long way from Sweets of Sin. Contrary to
Molly's sex-symbol reputation, her private sensibilities are more re
fined than Bloom's, and she is offended by his tastes—his dirty post
cards and anti-religious smut—and really outraged by A risto tles1
Masterpieces. Sadly, Molly recalls that in their courtship Bloom
brought her Byron's poetry, and she thought of him then as Byron.
There is sadness, too, in contrast between Molly's memories and con
cepts of beauty and the Dubliners' apprehension of her as a "nice arm
fu l." Molly displays her sensibilities in recalling Gibraltar:
"coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa . . . the guitar that fellow
played was so expressive w ill I never go back there again," and "two
eyes as darkly bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words
as loves young star." What painful contrast there is between this
sensibility Molly reveals and the slightly soiled photo of her that
Bloom displays.
While Molly is no doubt "recumbent and big with seed," her
thoughts do not reveal a being—male or female—who is fu lfille d . She
is neither satisfied with Boylan, whose loutishness she recognizes and
resents, nor fu lfille d in Bloom, whose failings she comprehends only
too well. Molly reviews Bloom's career as a provider and mentor in a
series of lost jobs and removals second only to the Dedalus family's.
288
But Molly is no mindless victim of her husband's failed leadership,
passively waiting for the bezique game in Flowerville. Molly is too
shrewd and toughr-minded for such delusions. While Bloom may fancy a
guiding role in Molly's li f e , and retain his place as head of the
house by locking up the check-book, he does in rea lity often depend on
Molly's management a b ilitie s , and sometimes on her potential as bread
winner. To see Molly as "properly placed in bed" is to overlook the
fact that she has supported the family by strumming in cafes while
Bloom was between jobs. Again, the reason Bloom has taken the big
house (which she. must manage* and which they can i l l afford) was to
open a music academy— something he obviously meant Molly to conduct.
Bloom is fu ll of schemes to make money though Molly: he has sold her
hair, encouraged her to pose for nude photos, suggested that she sell
her mother's milk, and is n 't much upset by the thought that she may get
money from Boylan. Poldy looks to Molly for help by sending her to ..
save his job at Cuffe's, and uses her name and her photo as a means of
"getting in" with the hostile and clannish Dubliners. I t is perhaps
his tragedy that he doesn't extend his reliance on Molly to listening
to her suggestions for guiding his career. Molly reveals som e fa irly
"goahead" ambitions for Poldy, and envisions him with a steady job in
a counting house—something he is obviously better suited for than his
inept canvassing activities among the insular Irish newspaper crowd.
Molly's level-headed and even masculine advice to be more p o litic with
employers goes unheeded by Poldy, and she bears the results of his
289
fo lly with him, meanwhile meeting the demands of her own career by
cleverly redoing old fans and gowns to keep up appearances for her con
certs. Molly is a survivor, and a'tenacious one,v.who lives by her wits
as much, i f not moreso, than anyone else in the book. She is never re
cumbent for long: as she lies scheming and plotting in the bed she
dislikes, we see her decide to get up at dawn and hurry out into the
world of the market-place.
Most d iffic u lt of a ll to reconcile with Tindall's globular earth-
earth interpretation of Molly is the fact that she is the only member
of the trin ity who is a practicing professional a rtis t. Rigidly ad
hering to the schema, Tindall insists that "Mrs. Bloom, as nature,
C /
lacks a rt." This is impossible to reconcile with the text, Joyce's
ow n schema notwithstanding. Of course Molly knows how to 's e ll' a song
by using, her body and beauty in her presentation; but that sort of
knowledge is an important facet of the performing arts, not mere female
wiles. Molly is no fool when i t comes to the technical aspects of her
craft. Thinking over her rendition of "Love's Old Sweet Song," she
carefully rehearses the precise weeping tone she needs on the word
"dead," considers the breath-spacing and stage blocking, and the d if
fic u lty of pronouncing "ists-beg" at the conjunction of "mists began"
in the ly ric . Molly knows how to get the maximum effect from her voice
as an instrument: "deep down chin back not too much make i t a double."
This is but a small sample of the coordinated mental and physical dis
cipline i t takes to sing before the pub!ic—especially the musically
290
astute Dublin public, as Joyce well knew. With professional tenacity,
Molly remembers which songs were D'Arcy's, which Dedalus', and Dedalus'
drunken mistake in "singing the second verse f ir s t." Recalling her own
performance with Simon, she compares his interpretation of "Maritana"
with D'Arcy's: "he had a delicious glorious voice Phoebe dearest good
bye sweetheart he always sang i t not like Bartel! D'Arcy sweet ta rt
goodbye." This is good fun of course, but only a singer with a good
technical ear would lie awake ruminating on such distinctions of re
versal and inflection. Of Dedalus' voice in his prime she recalls, "he
had the g ift of the voice so there was no art in i t at a ll," meaning,
presumably, that Simon did not have to go over the points of his per
formance as she does, making mental notes to move his chin back or
accent the proper syllable. "W e sang splendidly," she recalls, "though
i t was a b it too high for m y register even transposed." Here we have
quite a display of technical expertise from Tindall's "irra tio n a l"
mother nature. Belying her mother nature role, Molly reveals that her
performance is deliberate a rt, complementing Simon's natural g ift.
Though Bloom worries fussily over Molly's Italian pronunciation,
Molly is clearly in com m and of the fundamentals of her cra ft, and can
deal with problems of timing, enunciation, breathing, registers.and
transposition—all the while appearing beautiful and seductive to the
audience. Molly is an adroit performer: what she appears to be is
carefully calculated and controlled by.her mind. But more confusing
s t i l l , we see her transfer this kind.of negative capability into her
291
sexual performance with Boylan. O n page 745 of Ulysses we discover
that even in the extremity of sexual climax Molly carefully avoids any
facial contortions which might lessen her appeal as perfect beauty. I t
is increasingly clear as the coda develops that, as Penelope was «
eclipsed by an emerging Gaea-Tellus, Gaea-Tellus is gradually eclipsed
by the emergence of some other more powerful female force. And this
female force, playfully of mystically obscured by Joyce, dominates not
the 'female' world of nature and flesh, but the dynamically opposite
'male' province of discipline and art.
Richard Ellman, in Ulysses on the L iffy , attempts to resolve the
apparent contradictions in Molly's symbolic function. Unlike Tindall
and many earlier c ritic s , Ellmann fu lly recognizes Molly's dual role
as nature and a rt, and his analysis of the reconciliation she provides
is accordingly much more encompassing than Tindall's. "Molly, by de- -
monstrating that nature is a rt, may be seen by reaching across nine
chapters of the book to offer Shakespeare her hand. As Shakespeare
says in A Winter's Tale, '-6'er that art/Which you say adds to nature
is an art/That nature makes.' Deliberate and spontaneous creation are
joined."^ This analysis does move toward uniting Molly with Stephen
on a plane beyond the ostensible father-quest. But Ellmann's inter
pretation of Molly reveals a :s till heavy dependence on the Geae-Tellus
aspect: "Art has been shown to be a part of nature, and in all its
processes an imitation of natural ones. These processes have their
summit in love, of which the highest form is sexual love." S till
292
working to resolve the earth-mother symbol, Ellmann declares, "Molly
rebears paradise."
Though Molly's rhapsodic affirmation does leave us with a stunned
sense of consummation, Ellmann admits..that, the final lyrical moments
evoke a lost and remembered paradise. Moreover, the major portion of
Molly's monologue reveals the antithesis of fruition or rebirth.
Ellmann acknowledges that Molly's discourse contains as many denials
as affirmations, but he fa ils to deal in any depth with the evidence
that Molly does not celebrate sexual love with Bloom, and that her af
fa ir with Boylan is quite loveless. As for sex its e lf, Molly dismisses
that with "its only the f ir s t time after that its just the ordinary
do i t and think no more about it . " But the central problem is that
Molly Bloom, whatever she symbolizes, utterly opposes conception and
motherhood. She views Mina Purefoy's l i f e with repugnance, and re
members M illy's infancy with distaste. Except for those early days
with Bloom, Molly has apparently always maintained a vigilant guard
against conception. She prudently pulled Mulvey o ff in her handker
chief, and notes with re lie f that Boylan hasn't much "spunk" in him—
"so m uch the better in case any of i t wasnt washed out properly."
She is relieved when her period comes on: "anyhow he didnt make m e
pregnant." Throughout the episode Molly reveals an inordinate amount
of anxiety and mistrust about her female organs for a g'rown healthy
woman, and’is prey to an incredible number of g irlish superstitions:
"they once took something down out of a wom an that was up there for
293
years covered with limesalts." Retreating from her instinct to oral
sex she reminds herself "thats what gives the wom en the moustaches."
Evidentally Molly has had no-experience that would disprove her super
stition to her. Simply as a human being, Molly reveals a humorous and
touching combination of brash full-grown wom an and the l i t t l e Irish
g irl she once was, raised by a soldier father and an ignorant Spanish
housekeeper.
Like Molly herself, even the t it le of Ellmann's chapter is para
doxical: "W hy Molly Bloom Menstruates." N o amount of abstraction can
reconcile menstruation with rebirth; the two symbols are mutually ex
clusive in nature and therefore at any level of a rtis tic process which
must imitate the processes of nature. Menstruation is irrefutable
evidence that new lif e has failed to take hold. Ellmann deals with
this by interpreting the menstruation as "Promethean." By allowing
her blood to flow Molly is in som e way redeeming our world. There are
two flaws in this theory: f ir s t is Molly's ow n defiant attitude in the
text— "they're not going to be chaining m e down no dam n fear." But
more significantly, i f Molly is a sacrificial figure, she n u llifies
everything Joyce has been striving to create in terms of a release from
the nightmare of g u ilt, responsibility, and debt. This reading places
Molly back in the traditional pattern of a crucified Christ, a martyred
May Goulding, and the blood victim that God wants. As i f to unders
score, or add another dimension to Molly's non-serviceability as
Geae-Tellus, Joyce suggests that Molly's natural processes may be
294
impaired: "who knows is there anything the matter with m y insides or
have I something growing in m e getting that thing like that every
week when was i t last I Whit Monday yes its only about 3 weeks I ought
to go to the doctor" (p. 770). Only James Joyce would offer us a
Geae-Tellus with female troubles but outrageously funny as i t may be,
as Geae-Tellus Molly would seem to te ll us that our world is not
merely s te rile , but,a ludicrous parody of what was once whole, healthy,
and productive.
But s t i l l , we are le ft with that great ringing affirmation in our
ears.;, ;No reader with any sense of beauty could dismiss Molly as lu
dicrous. In this respect, Ellmann's insight that Molly, not Bloom, is
the ultimate reconciliation for Stephen because she presides over art
is much more to the point than the f e r t ilit y image. Clearly the answer
to the mysteries of Ulysses lies in that emerging form which eclipses
Geae-Tellus. Following Tindall's path—but in a much more penetrating
and persuasive argument, Ellmann turns his attention to what the
trin ity of characters symbolize together:
Joyce outflanks the individual lives of his characters
. . . by making each episode a part of the hum an body.
I t seemed at fir s t that this slow accretion of a human
form was gratuitous, but i t must now be seen to be es
sential. Stephen says that literatu re is the eternal
affirmation of the s p irit of man, but pure s p irit is
something never endorsed in this book. For the body of
m an must be affirmed with his s p irit . . . The identity of
the archetypal m an whose body the whole book limns is
never given; i t can scarcely be Bloom, since the book
is larger than he, i t must include Molly and Stephen,
a trin ity and a :unity. O n the analogy of Blakes
giant Albion, the androgynous m an who stands within
295
and behind and beyond might be called Hibernion.
One day he w ill be Finnegan.8
This is a b r illia n t addition to the Tindall concept of composing ideal
man, but once again, this time in Ellmann, we see the unconscious sur
facing of a traditional patriarchal bias. In Joyce's text, even grant
ing an androgynous figure, one of the most significant chapters— 'Ox
en'—is the womb. Moreover, the pronoun 'h e ', the appelation Hiber
nion, or an archetypal m an cannot symbolize Ireland or her race. Ire
land has been 'she' since prehistoric times and steadfastly remains so.
Ireland is invariably Kathleen, the beloved Rose, the old mother, and
the ancient woman. The emerging form Hibernian must be female, and
should be seen as precisely coincidental with that force which emerges
in Molly to eclipse the Graeco-Roman earth-mother. One day she w ill
be Anna Livia. What remains to be riddled then, is why she appears in
some way damaged or malfunctioning, and fin a lly , what symbolic pro
perties this female symbol offers us in place of those of Gaea-Tellus.
To do th is , we must remind ourselves that in Ulysses Joyce is a t
tempting a colossal synthesis, at once h isto rically particular and
humanly universal. Dublin is the microcosm for Western c iv iliz a tio n ,
and reflecting the true conditions of the modern West, a ll of Joyce's
characters have been synthesized ra c ia lly , nationally, mythically, and
in a final Joycean dimension, sexually. All day as the men wander
through Dublin, we see and hear the four dominant patriarchal elements
of Western c iv iliz a tio n : Graeco-Roman, Medieval Christian, Hebraic,
296
and Teutonic. And we see and hear modern Ireland as i t reflects these
four influences. All day we listen to a cacaphony of male voices—
stage Irishisms from Buck, cold disclaimers from Haines the comtempora-
ry 'Seafarer1, commerical Irish patriotism from the newsmen, whining
isolationism from Deasy, belligerence and boosey phrase-turning from
citizen and narrator in 'Cyclops.' W e hear, too, though more fa in tly ,
the echoes of this patriarchalized Irish world in pathetic Josie, cloy
ing Gerty, sluttish Cissy, and insane G um m y Granny. But where is an
cient Ireland, the old Celtic race, or fifth component of Western c i
vilization? Gaelic has, for all serious purposes, been silenced in the
Western world—we see this with Haines and the milk-woman. And with
that silencing, the Celtic race, or fifth strandentwining cable of
Western civ iliza tio n has had its visions, its beliefs, its meaning,
effectively cut off from our modern comprehension.
Against this background Stephen appears the child of many parents:
Ireland, the Church, Jehovah, the English language, the Cultures of
Greece and Rome. Stephen is the inheritor of the archetypal child's
agony of responsibility to a tita n ic array of conflicting 'parental' de
mands for loyalty and emulation. Stephen, whose mission i t is to forge
the conscience of his race, wanders not merely father!ess:but motherless
to a far greater degree. His mother^is dead and he couldn't save her—
she haunts him. His mother tongue is dead, and he acknowledges Shake
speare's language as his—yet he is committed to being Ireland's poet.
In 'Circe' he hysterically renounces his national mother, "Let m y
country die for me." But he immediately.retracts, "I don't want i t to
die . . . Long live life !" The wronged mother who haunts Stephen has
many guises: Mother Church with the b itterly sterile demands laid down
by her Fathers; the Virgin Mary with her insidiously unmanning for
giveness; and fin a lly insane G um m y Granny, whose demands that Stephen
sacrifice himself merge her with the insatiable paternal archetype
Jehovah and his crucified Son.
One must fin a lly submit that Stephen's reconciliation must be 1 not
with a father, but with a ll of his mothers. O n the Homeric level,
certainly, Stephen searches for a father to restore his birthright;
but on the Celtic level, that is mere prelude. Indeed, on the Celtic
level, even the designations 'father' and 'mother' are in a sense mis
nomers. As we have noted in historical commentary, the ancient Celtic
culture was relatively indifferent to what, for modern Western man, '
have become presumptive universal archetypes. Marriage, one of Vico's
three primal institutions, was apparently not significant enough-to the
ancients for them to include a single marriage-rite description in the
lite ra tu re . Paternity meant nothing in our sense of an heir apparent.
And because of the complex tribal patterns of fosterage or gossipred,
even motherhood as we understand i t meant l i t t l e . Nowhere is this
more apparent than in the Tain, where queen Maeve unconcernedly—even
ruthlessly—gives her daughter away to whoever w ill remove Cuchulain
from her path. W e have seen Stephen's reconciliation to a father in
terms of a symbolic fostering by Mananaan--a promise of a rtis tic
2 9 8
fruition. Now Joyce has returned us to the Ulster cycle its e lf, and
added the coloration of Ail i l l to Bloom's many metempsychoses. In this
context, who is Molly, what is she? Molly is of course Maeve, the pro
tagonist of the Ulster cycle—but much more. Molly is the mysterious
drawing force that controls Bloom's peregrinations, but she is in m uch
greater degree the end of Stephen's quest. Ancient Ireland, in the
modern world, is a timeless female whose voice has been silenced and
whose philosophic vision or racial conscience has been obscured. Molly,
in the novel, is the timeless wom an whose monologue goes unheard.and
whose personality is vaguely misinterpreted by all the scurrying Dublin
males. Throughout Ulysses Joyce has led Stephen and the reader by
labyrinthine indirection to a mysterious communion with Stephen's (and
his own) ultimate objective--the conscience of his race. Molly,
Marion Tweedy, is the "mare" that Stephen set out to "deline" in 'Pro
teus'. She is the Mare-god Epona, god of the Celts from perhaps Neo
lith ic times. She is therefore Stephen's true mother, and most signi
fican tly, his true God--the unlooked for yet inevitable culmination of
the novel's preoccupation with the horse.
In Molly Bloom Joyce demonstrates for us the uncreated conscience >
of his race: he shows us what uncreated ( i.e . dismantled or destroyed)
that conscience, and what i t was before the uncreation. The reason
that Molly is such a contradictory Geae-Tellus, such a nay-saying a f
firmation symbol, is that as Epona she embodies the racial life-visio n
that prevailed in Europe before the patriarchies overwhelmed i t . Epona
299
is from beyond Homeric Greece or Christianity; she is from beyond the
institutions that Bloom, Stephen, or the reader know, and her attitudes
consequently defy the expectations of patriarchally-oriented Western
minds, including Mssrs. Tindall and Ellmann. Epona, like Shakespeare's
unquenchable Anne Hathaway, is the g irl the Celts le ft behind when they
"trudged to Romeville," and she confounds any of the archetypal roles
patriarchy confers on the female. Stephen's true mother is , like him
self, one who ta rtly refuses to serve, yet is'certainly w illing to give.
She is a mother who.is unconcerned with motherhood—created instead in
the image of a wife-lover like Macha or Maeve. In Ulysses a damaged
yet surviving Molly struggles to rebear the decency, freedom, and har
mony of an ancient matriarchy, and the philosophic vision of a race
that faded into the West, leaving to Europe only the paradoxical notion
of romantic love and service to women—a muted and vestigial legacy of
Romance and ritual chivalry.
Unlike Gaea-Tellus, the Mare-god was not simply the all-yieldin g
fe r tile earth: she was envisioned as the active motive force of that
ancient world. Because the Celts did not envision their relationship
to god as a child-parent situation, but as a marriage or partnership,
they managed to avoid many of the undignified g u ilt, fear, and shame
patterns which Joyce found repugnant in patriarchal religion and
culture. Epona, the antithesis of a jealous god, issue no "shalt not"
edicts. In the Ulster cycle, through symbolic Maeve, queen of Cups,
she puts forth three commandments: the ideal husband shall be to ta lly
generous, to ta lly brave, and to ta lly free of jealousy--in short, he
300
shall match her own qualities precisely. The sexual freedeom and
maturity of mates in the ancient Celtic society, magnified to a para
digmatic relationship of God and mankind, was ideally a respectful and
absolute balance which eschewed any gesture of possessiveness and/or
subordination—which probably explains why the Celts practiced no sa
c rific ia l or supplicatory religious rites. The Mare-god presided over a
society whose priests and poets were one, and in which poetry was the
highest endeavor of a l l —a sacred act of tribute.
In Ul.ysses Molly is the Irish race, most pointedly the Milesians
who came to Ireland from Spain. But more importantly, Molly is a ll of
the incarnations or metempsychoses of the Mare-god which appear in
the Ulster cycle. Molly is Fann in the defiant a ffa ir with Boylan, and
in her acceptance, fin a lly , of her own husband: as Fann returns to
Mananaan "because he w ill show m e no disobedience," so Molly chooses
Bloom "because I knew I could always get around him." At times she
echoes Emer in her protective defense of Poldy— "they're not going to
get m y husband again into their clutches i f I can help it ," (p. 773)
recalling Emer's battle with Fann to wrest Cuchulain back from that
'other* world. Most consistently, however, Molly appears as queen
toeve, protagonist of the Tain. Molly's irrita tio n at the beginning of
the code is extremely Maeve-like: she is outraged at Poldy's sudden
bid for superiority, even as Maeve is outraged by A i l i l l 's similar
gesture in the "Pillow Talk segment of the Tain. The workings of the
old racial conscience and the effect of the forces that damaged i t
301 '
begin to emerge when we compare that original "Pillow Talk"—where
Zimmer detected his evidence of a matriarchy in process of being over
whelmed by patriarchy—with Joyce's modern recreation. In both, a hus
band makes a bid to gain ascendance over his wife; in both the husband
relates som e partial falsehoods and omits some pertinent truths; in
both the wife is annoyed, yet the marriage is not destroyed. There the
sim ilarities end: the ancient "Pillow Talk" engenders an epic war;
Joyce's version leads to an internalized, non-violent justification by
his 'great queen.1 The 'Penelope' chapter parallels the episodes of
The Tain only by indirection: the deaths of young warriors funneled
through Gibraltar, the teasing of the dog, the b u ll-fig h t witnessed
with the Stanhopes—all are seen dimly through the mist of Molly's m em
ory as long-ago events. Joyce has de-emphasized the savagery of the
Cattle-Raid; taken i t out of the hands of the patriarchal redactors
and rewritten i t from its protagonist's point of view. What he offers
us is an expanded pillow -talk that engulfs The Tain and holds5i t ,
timeless and dreamlike, from its domestic-quarrel inception to the men
strual denouement of its finale.
Throughout the Ulster cycle, Ail i l l is consistently the archetype
of the unwise and unreasonable husband who w ill not accept partnership
but must try to assume control. I f Joyce has invested Bloom with the
grandeur of Mananaan, he has in equal measure circumscribed his
character with the quite contrary persona of Ail i l l , the bumbling con
sort. In the Tain, the "Pillow Talk" begins with A i l i l l 's -
ill-considered attempt to aggrandize himself before his queen: " . . .
thou art this day better off than the day I f ir s t took thee," to which
9
Maeve replies evenly, "As w ell-o ff was I before I ever saw thee." But
he w ill persist: " It was a wealth, indeed, we never heard or knew of
. . . but a woman's wealth was all thou hadst." This is a preposterous
statement, as all the noble families of Ireland, including Ail i l l ' s
in Leinster, surely were aware of Eochaid's daughter and her sovereignty
long before this alliance took place. He pushes his argument further
by chiding that she was weak and defenseless until he arrived. Again,
the effect is rather comic, as Ail i l l is ever the reluctant warrior in
the cylce. But Maeve is not amused, and rebukes her husband that of
her father's daughters, " It was I was the goodliest of them ih bounty
and gift-giving . . . I t was I was the best of them in battle and s trife
and combat . . . hence m y father bestowed one of the five provinces upon
me!. . ." She then.reminds A il.ill that many powerful m en sought a lle
giance with her before him (a fact of which he is only too aware), but
she rejected them all because:
. . . i t is I that exacted a peculiar bride-gift . . .
namely, a husband without avarice, without jealousy,
without fear. For should he be mean . . . we were i 11 -
matched together, inasmuch as I am great in largess
and gift-giving, and i t would be a disgrace for m y hus
band i f I should be better at spending than he . . .
while no disgrace . . . were one as great as the other.
Were m y husband a coward, i t were as unfit for us to be
mated, for I by myself and alone break battles . . .
and i t would be a reproach for m y husband should his wife
be more fu ll of lif e than himself, and no reproach in
our being equally bold. Should he be jealous . . ..th a t
303
too would not suit me, for there never was a time when
I had not one m an in the shadow of another. Howbeit,
such a husband have I found, namely thyself, Ail i l l
. . . Thou was not churlish; thou wast not jealous;
thou was not a sluggard.
The shift into the past tense ought to be enough to .warn'Ail i l l that he
embarked on a dangerous incursion. Maeve's remarks suggest the possi
b ility of disenchantment--though not quite so strongly as Molly's dis
enchanted "all the things he told father he was going to do and m e but
I saw .through him . . . whatever I liked he was going to do immediately
i f not sooner . . . he ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim \
for all the plans he invents then leaving us here" (p. 765). Not
withstanding, both the prototype Maeve and Joyce's Molly appear to be
w illing to live with their choices. However, Maeve has no intention
whatever of allowing Ail i l l to forget who chose whom — i t is a crucial
symbolic (and legal) point in the Tain: " It was I plighted thee, and
gave purchase price to thee, which of right belongs to the bride.
And because of this inversion of the customary husband's furnishing of
the dowry, "Whoso brings shame and sorrow and madness upon thee, no
claim for compensation or satisfaction hast thou, therefor that I m y
self have not, but i t is to m e the compensation belongs . . . for a m an
dependent upon a woman's maintainance is what thou a rt." That is , un
der Brehon Law, Maeve now holds A il i ll 's 'honor price': she has
brought him under her tribal jurisdiction, as a fostering would be.
This is the simple truth, but Ail i l l stubbornly refuses to le t the
matter drop, and he persists in declaring that he is richer than Maeve.
304-
His obdurance leads into the possessions-counting passage in which the
queen discovers to her chagrin that he is indeed richer by one herd
bull—the recalcitrant White-horned which defected from her own herd
"deeming i t no honor to be in a woman's possession." The final step
triggered by A iT ill1s foolishness is the bargaining for the Dun of
Cooley, the Ulstermen's absurd insult to Maeve, and her consequent
epic rage. One need not belabor the theological import of this do
mestic scene: that the queen's rage is so great, that A i l i l l 's boast
ing leads to a national war, indicates the depth of seriousness beneath
the metaphoric language. Man's refusal or in ab ility to accept partner
ship here ultimately unleashes the Morrigu aspect of the deity in a
gathering of vast armies and a tableau of implacable slaughter.
In Joyce's pillow -talk, Bloom, like A ilill., does fabricate and
shade the truth: he omits his enounter with Gerty and the whoTe
Nighttown adventure, and pretends to have seen Leah. He meets with as
l i t t l e success as his counterpart; Molly commenting later "hes such
a born lia r" (p. 773). Moreover he is trying to impress Molly with
his own worth by emphasizing his 'p rize ,' Stephen Dedalus. But his
real A ilill- lik e presumption,.(which we don't even hear at this time)
is his symbolic request for eggs in bed in the morning. The emphasis
of this authorially-repressed demand fa lls on Molly's reaction to i t —
and in her reaction Joyce finds sufficient scope for demonstrating
contrasts between the old conscience and the contemporary one.
305
In the novel, Molly is as outraged as Maeve by her husband's sud
den bid for superiority: "an Ini to be slooching around down in the
kitchen to get his lordship his breakfast . . . w i l l I indeed did you
ever see m e running Id just like to see myself" (p. 778). But Molly's
reaction is a hedged one—two pages later she considers she'll "throw
him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup . . . I suppose hed like m y
nice cream too." While the new subservience is part of a fanciful stra
tegy to extract money from Bloom, Molly is clearly not so sure of her
self as Maeve—and with reason. In Molly's contemporary setting, wo-
rnen— even strong wom en like herself—are in a severely limited and
precarious position. Certainly divorce would be as ruinous for her as
for Kitty O'Shea, and the ash-heap is a very real threat—as Mrs. Dig-
nam and Josie Powell demonstrate. The world of Dublin 1904 is heavily
patriarchal, and while Molly can remember her proud past— "soldiers
daughter am I"--th e female certainly no longer holds the keys to the
kingdom as Eochaid's strongest daughter did. Molly's Irish accent is
"all father le ft m e in spite of his stamps" (p. 763). Nor can she com
pare her possessions against!her. husband's—they are no longer equals,
for Bloom has the check-book locked up downstairs. What has happened in
the modern world is spelled out succinctly by Molly: "then always hang
ing out of them for money in a restaurant for the b it you put down your
throat we have to be thankful for our mangy cup of tea its e lf as a great
compliment to be noticed the way the world is divided" (p. 750, emphasis
306
mine). A i l i l l 's giddy hopes have become rea lity : this world is d i
vided by a sexual polarization, with money, the modern source of power,
held by the males. The mare has indeed been bitted and bridled, and
unlike Maeve, moving securely through a moneyless world of communal
freedom, Molly has few recourses but to acquiesce to the feigned role
of gratitude.
Compared to Maeve's stock-taking, Molly's is pathetic in the ex
treme—and much more is involved here than the obvious necessary dis
parity between a mythic queen-god and a shabby-genteel naturalistic mor
ta l. "I've no clothes at a l l . . . . 3 whats that for any wom an cutting
up this old hat and patching up the other." But we notice that while
she is very aware that Bloom occassionally forgets to lock the check
book drawer, Molly has so far been hesitant to carry out her threat to
make out "a fine cheque for myself and write his name on i t for a
couple of pounds" (p. 780). Instead, she plots to use her feminine
wiles to get the things she wants from Bloom and Boylan. Here, the
new division cuts even deeper, driving men and wom en to prey upon each
other in ways-scarcely removed from the brothel its e lf—and far less
forth rig ht.. What is pathetic is not the contrast between the posses
sions of an ancient god and a modern mortal, but the contrast between
the ancient and modern female psychological outlook.
The extent of this damaging division between m en and women, between
male and female prerogatives, and the consequences to the female psyche,
are heavily underscored when we compare Maeve's choosing of Ail i l l with
307
Molly's choosing of Leopold. W hen Ail i l l tries to force his queen to
be grateful, she austerely reminds him that she was sovereign of Con
naught before she met him: not only did she elevate him to kingship,
but by so generously dowering him, by giving him what she should have
gotten, she has brought him under her tribal protection. Under the an
cient laws, Maeve is in a position of unimpeachable strength. But
those laws are long forgotten now, and Molly's position is the inverse.
Under the new system, Molly has been 'damaged goods' from the beginning:
Bloom "hadnt an idea about m y mother t i l l we got engaged otherwise hed
never have gotten m e so cheap as he did." What was a grand gesture on
Maeve's part is a kind of furtive cheating on Molly's—at least in her
mind. Through patriarchal eyes (and this is the way Molly has been
trained to see), Molly's value on the marriage market was questionable
either because her mother ran off or perhaps because her parents were
not married. The matter is deliberately obscure in the novel, but none
theless an important inhibiting factor in Molly's self-image. By her
own estimation, Molly was "not for all markets" when she chose Bloom.
Like the character Moll; Flanders w hom she detests, Molly Bloom was
born into a weakened position in a world which places inordinate value
on legitimacy and propriety. Sadly enough, she has absorbed the judg
mental attitudes of that world to a large degree.
Molly's intolerant reaction to Defoe's Moll is a fine piece of
Joycean irony. Their shared attributes clearly come too close for
comfort in Molly's conscience, forcing her to reject rather than
308
empathize with the older fictio n . Like Defoe's Moll, Molly coldly
calculates what she can exact from TSaylan; for the duration of their
liaison—new shifts, a gold bracelet, som e good food and good times.
But she must hurry, for his interest won't be held for long. In her
eyes, she has only four good years,left before her sexual attractive
ness, and therefore her options, are at an end. Then, the descent to
the ash-heap w ill begin. For the harsh modern world she inhabits,
Molly's calculations are not far from accuracy—as accurate as Moll
Flanders' were in the eighteenth century. "The way the world is
divided" is not a twentieth century phenomenon: the system in which
both female characters operate forces them, like the whores, to make
the most of the only commodity remaining at their discretion—a com m o
dity with an unfortunately rapid deterioration rate. Pathetically,
neither Defoe's Moll nor Joyce's Molly can isolate or identify the
forces that make them 'bad women.' Such resolutions are matters for
author and reader, outside the framework of the fictio n . Within Joyce's
fic tio n , Molly is not an objective reader here: as she judges Moll
Flanders— "a whore always shoplifting"—so she judges herself, uncon
sciously. All of Molly's bravado cannot save her from her own guilt
feelings. While she may disclaim "its his ow n fault i f I am an adult
eress," and remonstrate "0 much about i t thats a ll the harm we did in
this vale of tears," we feel none of the casual serenity of queen
Maeve's unadorned declarations "there never was a time when I had not
one m an in the shadow of another." Terms like "fault" and "adulteress"
309
give Molly away. Queen Maeve lived in a world where this sort of
guilty conscience, these efforts to shift blame, were unnecessary and
unknown. Molly Bloom, unfortunately, lives in an Ireland which has
adopted a to ta lly different conscience--a world which, as Joyce has
been at pains to display throughout Ulysses, is founded in g u ilt and
fear of punishment.
Perhaps the strongest link Joyce created between Molly and Stephen
is their mutual responsiveness to that force which has done so m uch
damage, mythically and psychologically, to both of them—the interpo
sition of a patriarchal god of vengeance. I f Bloom and Stephen un
w ittingly share thoughts, attitudes, reactions throughout the day, the
coda reveals that Molly and Stephen are also unconscious sharers. And
most prominent among their shared reactions is their identical fear of
thunder. In both characters, thunder engenders Viconian sensations of
fear and g u ilt, but Molly's are the more specific and parochial. While
Stephen was within the "womb1 of Holies Street hospital, Molly had just
concluded her tryst and:
f e lt lovely and tired myself and fe ll asleep sound as a top
. . . t i l l that thunder woke m e up as i f the world was
coming to an end God be merciful to us I thought the hea
vens were coming down about us to punish when I blessed my
self and said a Hail Mary . . . and they te ll you theres
no God what could you do i f i t was running and rushing
about nothing only make an act of contrition (p. 741).
Like Stephen, Molly can take no comfort in Bloom's phenomenological ap
proach to the mysterious forces in the universe: "hed scoff i f he
heard because he never goes to church mass or meeting he says your soul
310
you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesn't know what
is to have one yes." And Like Stephen Molly resents the interference
of the organized church and the tensions of conflict imposed between
natural desire and abstract ideals "theres nothing like a kiss long and
hot down to your soul almost paralyses you than I hate that confession."
Yet to deny the soul would be to lose the rapture in the kiss: so,
though she hates confession, yet she confesses. Rather than give up
b elief, she accepts the enforced contrition. Unlike Stephen, Molly can
raise no sustained intellectually-based defiance of the sky-god—for
Molly is, touchingly and appropriately, the most religious member of
the trin ity : i t could scarcely be otherwise with god herself.
Joyce garnered the richest, most tellin g effects of his 'mythic
character unknown to i t s e l f technique in the creation of Molly Bloom.
Molly's position as the truest believer of the three makes her the
closest approximation to a tragic figure in the novel. For the Judeo-
Christian belief she has inherited on her hum an and historical levels is
precisely the force that distorts and destroys her identity on the Cel
tic mythological level. And yet, i t is her very relig io sity that links
her to Stephen in a way Bloom can never be linked with either of them.
Bloom's adherence to lite ra l truth leaves no breadth for the imagina
tion, no r scope for the passions, fin a lly , no room for the metaphoric
ambivalence that alone makes the world possible for a rt. While we
have seen throughout the book "a touch of the a rtis t about old Bloom,"
here in the coda, with his Ail i l l persona uppermost, the divergence
3TT
between Bloom's factual ness and Molly's passions emphasize the mereness
of truth, lacking beauty--or as Anna Livia w ill later express i t , "how
small it 's a ll." The conflict is demonstrated in the row they once had;
a combination of repressed sexual tensions, temperaments, and religion:
"that was why we had that standup row over politics he began i t not m e
when he said about Our Lord being a carpenter at last he made m e cry of
course a wom an is so sensitive about everything . . . and the fir s t so
c ia lis t he said He was annoyed m e so much I couldn't put him into a
temper" (p. 742). In this scene Poldy and Molly strongly resemble
Ail i l l and Maeve— he the bland, imperturable l i t t l e figure who neither
understands nor joins in the great tides of passion his behavior pro
vokes in a mate capable of feelings and deeds far beyond his own. The
difference is that Maeve knew absolutely who she was and what she was
free to do. Molly, in this respect, is severely handicapped.
There is , of course, wonderful fun in the coda arising out of
Molly's continuing 'missed understanding' of her ow n identity. Her ow n
use of horse-imagery is at once comic and poignant; "one thing I didnt
like his slapping m e behind . . . though I laughed Im not a horse or an
ass am I," and "Boylan talking about the shape of m y foot he noticed at
once even before he was introduced." These are comedic gestures, com
ing as they do from a horse-dealer's son. Boylan's compliments, too,
are couched in betting-room parlance—"what did he say I could give 9
points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her what does that mean I asked
him I forget what he said because the stoppress edition just passed."
312
Boylan's racing metaphor, juxtaposed with the announcement that Throw
away has defeated Sceptre, diminishes the simple fun with sadder impli
cations, and som e of the horse-imagery has no element of amusement at
a l l —Boylan mounting her "Tike a Stallion" with "that determined v i
cious look in his eye" appalls Molly so that she is forced to close her
eyes (p. 742). Molly displays a mixture of apprehension and fascina
tion for the violent, destructive aspect of male sexuality as she con
templates "that blackguardicoking fellow with the fine eyes peeling a
switch attack m e in the dark and ride m e up against a wall" (p. 777).
But fear seems stronger than t it illa tio n in the last analysis: though
she fantasizes, we note that she doesn't carry through with those
imaginings. She goes neither to the quay after sailors, nor to the
tinkers' cam p to provoke the blackguards— in truth, she is actually
frightened to be alone in the big barracks of a house at night, and
worried that a tinker might actually force his way in. Being "ridden"
in this way is something Molly guards against. Predictably, she
thoroughly disapproves of horse-betting a ctivities: "do you ever see
wom en . . . gambling every penny that have and losing i t on horses" is
a pointed thematic statement.
But the symbolic fate of horses finds its strongest expression in
Molly's remembrance of the b u ll-fig h t she attended with the Stanhopes,
a scene in which Joyce compresses all of his mythological counters to
reveal a fettered s p irit:
313
clothes we have to wear whoever invented them
expecting you to walk up Killeny h ill then for in
stance at that picnic all staysed up you cant do
a blessed thing in them . . . run or jump out of
the way thats why I was afraid when that other
ferocious old Bull began to charge . . . and the
brutes of m en shouting bravo toro sure the wom en
were as bad in their nice white mantillas ripping
all the whole insides out of those poor horses I
never heard of such a thing in a ll m y lif e yes
he used to break his heart at m e taking off the
dog barking in bell lane poor brute and i t sick
what became of them ever . . . its like all
through a mist makes you feel so old (pp. 755-756).
In this chiarosuro miniature, one need not belabor the presenta
tion of the "other" bull, the brutes of men, or the mockery of the dog
as fo ils for archetypal figures and events in The Tain. What arrests
us most is Molly's fear in contrast to Maeve's furious capture of the
bull. The restrictive clothing surely alludes to Judeo-Christian in
tervention, for the inventor of clothing was Jehovah himself: "Unto
Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and
clothed them" (Genesis 3:21). "Staysed up" in this invention, Molly is
lite r a lly handicapped and understandably afraid of encountering bulls—
a far remove from the pagan freedom of bare-breasted Maeve. The fun
damental elements of the Tain are fin a lly so distorted and obscured by
the mists of time that a complete reversal occurs: the horse is not
merely defeated by its adversary the bull, but disemboweled (as Cu-
chulain's gae bulgae disemboweled his opponents) and quite destroyed.
Correspondingly, Molly feels suddenly old and flagging. In the re
membered bullfight sequence Joyce achieves a concise objective
314
correlative for Ireland and for the shattered racial conscience. Con
fined by the strictures of the imported religion, the old s p irit is
helpless before a ll bul1s--papal, English, or patriarchal--and so is
inevitably gutted.
The Stanhope interlude in Molly's young lif e would seem to mark i
the nadir of her existence in purely Celtic terms: with them she wit
nessed the bu llfig ht, and during their brief association she was given
the nam e "Doggerina" by Hester—paralleiing Stephen's acquisition of
the nam e "poor dog§body" from Mulligan. Both characters, then, have a
momentary skirmish with Cuchulain's transformation. And both have
escaped. Joyce maintains a very delicate balance in the Molly-Hester
relationship. The muted lesbic suggestions of non-fruition are offset
by Hester's positive influence as a mentor. While the renaming of
"Doggerina" and Hester's presentation of herself as a dog—"have just
had a jo lly warm bath and feel a very clean dog now" (p. 755)—are cer
tainly discouraging portents in the Celtic context, Molly's brief f l i r
tation with doggishness is compensated by two factors. F irst, Hester
does introduce Molly to at least a moderate sampling of literatu re; \
with Hester, Molly experiences, albeit b rie fly , that other world of
camaraderie and intellectual sharing traditionally considered 'mascu
lin e .' More importantly, Molly's association with Hester awakens in
her a significant and emblematic desire.for letters. I f at the end of
the Stanhope incident Molly appears desolated, the emphasis does not
fa ll on either the physical loss of Hester or the naively imagined
315
attentions of Mr. Stanhope. Rather, Molly's desolation finds its fo
cus in the absence of letters: "the days like years not a le tte r from
a living soul except the odd few I posted to myself with bits of paper
in them so bored . . . as bad as now with m y hands hanging o ff m e
looking out of the window" (p. 757).
From this point on the coda, Molly's true a ffin itie s with Stephen
are developed in deft symbolic strokes around the central ambiguity of
'le tt e r s .1 While Joyce has sprinkled the text with correspondences be
tween the two—Molly's "I saw his eyes on m y feet" echoes Stephen's
"But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt's show went on you . . .
Tiens, quel petit pied" (p. 4 9 ).and "m y singing the absentminded beg
gar" coinciding with Stephen's besting of Best with "Hamlet ou . . .
The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended"— i t is the issue of letters
that fin a lly dominates. Molly's projected union with a young stranger
is an almost purely symbolic statement of the Celtic theme; the union
is clearly destined to be a spiritual rather than carnal confluence—
a confluence built strongly in the novel through their spiritual and
a rtis tic correspondences. Stephen and Molly, dispossessed as they are
by the advent of a sky-god, nonetheless share a need for a belief-sys-
tem, and for an acknowledgement of the soul. He is the would-be poet,
she the practicing a rtis t. He longs to worship—and Molly, of course,
longs to be worshipped.
What Molly wants, both as a wom an and as the Mare-god, is her
proper tribute. She dearly loves to hear Poldy bumbling upstairs with
316
her breakfast tray; she wants respectful attention, lovely things, the
abundance of the old communal system, and most pointed of a ll, Molly
wants le tte rs . W hen the Stanhopes went away, Molly desperately sent
herself slips of paper: we note that she can't write letters herself,
she rather must inspire them in others—an alternative answer to the
question 'what else are wom en for?' that occurs in both Stephen's and
Molly's monologues. Encouragingly., Molly's despair as "Doggerina" did
not last long. Mulvey's was the fir s t; and eventually Bloom brought
her the tribute of letters; both the works of Byron and his own af
fectionate offerings. What Molly really wants is spelled out unmistak
ably on page 758 of the coda:
I hope hell write m e a long le tte r the next time i f its a
thing he really likes m e 0 thanks to be the great God I
got somebody to give m e what I badly wanted to put som e
heart up into m e youve no chances at all in this place likeyou
used to long ago I wish somebody would write m e a love-
le tte r his wasnt much and I told him he could write what
he liked yours ever Hugh Boylan
Letters of adoration, not sex its e lf, are what revitalizes Molly: for
her, as for the druids, the written word is a renewal of the world—
"true or no i t f i l l s up your whole day and lif e always something to
think about every moment and see i t all around you like a new world."
Ultimately, as the Mare, Molly looks to Stephen for her renewal, for
salvation from the ash heap, and for the immortality that this god must
always achieve through her poets. Of course she envisions Stephen as
a lover rather than a son, and in contrast to Bloom's paternal am
bitions for Stephen, Molly hopes to provide Stephen with a place to
317
write and someone to write about. "I can teach him the other part . . .
then hell write about m e lover and mistress." The word, and the word
alone, is the Mare-god's life-source.
But w ill Stephen return to 7 Eccles Street, partake of Molly's
refreshments ("olives" is a delightful punning addition here), resur
rect her from the ash heap? Will Stephen fin a lly "deline the mare?"
O n the naturalistic surface of the novel, one must reluctantly conclude
that such eventualities are extremely unlikely. So then, i f we are to
account for the great affirmation which concludes Joyce's epic, w e
must find its justification in other sources than the speculative crea
tion of sequels to the text proper. As usual, Mr. Joyce has provided
ample suggestive clues to ju s tify a positive reading.
In comparing Molly to her Celtic prototypes, we have thus far nec
essarily accentuated the 'damaged' aspects of her nature. While
Molly's ta rt refusals to serve: "did you ever see m e running," and :
"Im not a horse . . . am I" are marvelous mythic puns that reveal a
modern Ireland unable to recognize its uncreated self, these touching
bits of hum an bravado reveal at the same time a s p irit without cruelty.
Moreover, Molly's monologue reveals a s p irit which, i f damaged, is
s t ill very far from capitulation, m uch less extinction: "I suppose he
thinks Im finished out and laid on the shelf well Im not no nor any
thing like it" (p. 766). In fact, Molly's audacious strength is what
relieves Bloom from the burdens of g u ilt that more patriarchalized
females heap upon their men. She has run some of the race for him and
318
carried some of the burden,,but he has done the same for her, and she
generously remembers that, too. His appearance is s t ill delightful to
her, for she remarks of her rivals, "let them get a husband fir s t thats
f i t to be looked a t," indicating that she most certainly finds Poldy
attractive. Bloom's sins, after a ll, are not those of a brutal Ulster
man. He hasn't bet on the horse-race, he hasn't ruined his family
playing the good fellow in bars like the rest of the Dublin fratern ity,
and no doubt he w ill remember to get her face-1otion soon enough.. All
of this Molly remembers: her withdrawal from Bloom is not irreparable.
Like Maeve, Molly loves her husband in the fu ll knowledge of his lim i
tations, and intends to remain with him. Her generosity has not been
impaired.
O n a deeper level in the text's esthetic argument, Molly's t e r r i
fic hold on l i f e , her wonderful v ita lity , is quite pronounced and re
assuring. In contrast to the pure and stone-cold goddesses of the
Classical ideal, Molly, like Maeve, certainly does not subsist on
electric lig h t. Her magnificent appetite is a source of great fun in
the monologue--but i t makes a serious philosophic point as well. Mol
ly relishes a ll the delicious and richly abundant fru its of the e a rth -
fancy pears, stout, pork chops, the fine salty tang of potted meat,
that perfectly browned chicken at her last fancy outing, the rich
cream in her breakfast tea. Unlike fastidious Bloom, Molly is an eater
of incredible gusto and sensuality: in contrast to him, she has no
trouble in letting her consequent wind go free. Molly has neither
319
interest nor need for the "Wonderworker;" she functions quite well, in
frank Celtic style. Insofar as Molly symbolizes Art its e lf , i t is
significant, essential, that she be wel1-nourished with all good
things. A healthy Art needs fueling—as Father Butt once tried to
demonstrate to sophomoric Stephen with a parable of the lamp and its
fuel in P o rtrait. ^ And Molly, damaged or not, shows no signs of
diminished appetite, nor any loss of drive to provide for i t . More
over, in esthetic philosophical terms, Molly's organic 'tr u th ,1 her
physical appetites and outlets, preclude that fa ls ity and corruption
which Joyce perceived as the inevitable fate of the Ideal in art. A s
a female conceived in the Celtic style, Molly is the polar opposite of
the electricity-consuming nymph in Circe.
And so, too, is the God w hom Molly invokes at the end of the coda
distinctly contrasted with the God at the beginning. I f Molly was
awakened and frightened by the electricity-wielding sky-god, we notice
that as the monologue gathers force and accelerates, the vengeful sky-
god is gradually eclipsed by a god of nature, manifest in the living
things of the earth rather than the invisible phenomena of the ether.
This metemphsychosis is perhaps inevitable; for while Molly never
wavers for a moment in her belief in a _ god, her Christian orthodoxy
has been colored from the beginning with an admixture of pagan vestig
es.. She."throws the cards" each morning and accepts such auguring with
simple solemnity. Indeed, she is forever watching for signs of good
or i l l fortune, and recalls that she broke an Irish folk-superstition
320
by sewing a button on M illy's jacket while the girl was wearing it :
this, Molly is convinced, was the fatal signature of M illy's journey.
Joyce achieves a delightful 'masterstroke' of irony by including "the
candle I l i t that evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month
of May see i t brought its luck'.' (p. 741). Amusingly, Molly's r e lig i
osity does not extend to an orthodox knowledge that May is the Feast
of St. B rigit—much less that St. B rigit is actually Cormac's "one
powerful God," diminished and refurbished to suit the needs of the
Irish Church. Instead, Joyce has Molly kindle her own tiny Bel tain
fire out of the simple folk instinct that lighting candles 'fo r' the
month of May its e lf is lucky. W hen we bring a ll symbolic levels of
the book together here, Molly is quite unconsciously lighting a candle
to herself—one more of those paradoxical l i t t l e gem s which Joyce
strews with such abundance throughout the novel.
The deeper racial reservoirs of Molly's faith well up, fin a lly ,
after she has begun her menstruation; the physical catharsis coin-’
ciding with a catharsis of Molly's fears, as her hopes rise with the
promise of a new poet. As Molly's hopes rise, her apprehension of the
s p irit of deity shifts emphasis from destruction to creation—god be
comes the primal source of beauty, not fear: "God of heaven theres
nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves
rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats . . . and the
fine cattle going about that would do your heart good . . ." (p. 781).
The special pleasure at well-kept cattle is a particularly apt detail
321
for a Maeve-surrogate, but in this context not a comic one. I f Stephen
dreamed "Last night I flew. Easily flew," Molly here accomplishes his
dream: for the sequential panorama is a view of the physical world as
a bird, or as G od would see i t —specifically as this god, who contains
a bird aspect, i_ s _ seeing i t . Molly does return b riefly to the god of
fear—but only to express disdain for lapsed Catholics who rush to a
priest in the last extremity "because theyre afraid of hell on account
of their bad conscience" (p. 782). The overwhelming emphasis, however,
is on creativity and a pagan response to the corporeal, rather than the
ideological manifestation of deity. Moreover, Molly's appreciation of
the creation underscores its a rtis try rather than its base fecundity.
Molly's contemplation does not, lik e the Judeo-Christian tradition,
express pleasure at the usefulness of c attle, or oats, or the fish in
the sea, to humanity: i t is not a catalogue of practical riches.
Molly's is a catalogue of the a rtis tic inspiration inherent in the
creation--a rapturous contemplation of the physical creation as the
source of all beauty. In its final moments, Molly's expansive glo ri
fication of the splendor of the physical merges with her menstruation,
"and 0 that awful deepdown torrent 0 and the sea the sea crimson some
times like fire" (p. 783). I f the earth reflects God, here the earth
appears to give back the image of a female god—which brings us back to •
the issue of "why Molly Bloom menstruates." For our purposes, as for
Joyce's, the answer lies in The Tain.
322
To answer 'why does Molly Bloom menstruate at the close of Uly
sses?1 with the rejoinder 'because Maeve of Connaught menstruates at
the close of The Tain' is at once ju s tifia b le and oversimplified. Of
course Joyce was using a model, and to leave out the most notorious
scene in The Tain would be to disfigure his source as Augusta Gregory
and so many others had done before him. O n the other hand, Joyce ob
viously did not feel constrained to adhere fa ith fu lly to any of his
models: most notably, he flagrantly rearranges the structure of the
Odyssey to suit his own purposes, and certainly made free with other
Teutonic and Celtic elements at need. But the menstruation scene in
The Tain appears to have held major significance for Joyce—enough so
that he refrained from tampering with its original placement, and • „
fitte d the close of his novel to the configuration of the ancient text.
The deliberate parallel emphasizes s t ill more the equally deliberate
non-parallels between the Odyssey and Ulysses.
The Tain offers us an almost numbing repetition of combats; the
accretion of centuries of bardic embellishment on the original core
legend. I t is the sheer superfluity of Cuchulain's exploits, fin a lly ,
that has gradually obliterated the symbolic structure beneath. While
Cuchulain's "numberless" victories have in themselves become the 'point'
of the Tain for many Revival commentators, i t is demonstrable that the
Hound's monotonous confrontations with Nadcranntail, Cur, Larene,
etc. neither move the action forward nor develop character in any way.
Beneath the accrued carnage, however, The Tain yields a small number
323
of essential confrontations which, in the larger context of the com
plete cycle, have major symbolic impact—and which ultimately give the
Ulster cycle its symbolic unity. The two crucial confrontations in The
Tain are "The Battle at the Ford"—the apex of Cuchulain's personal
tragedy mid-point in the epic, and of course "The Final Battle"—the
full-scale panorama which brings all the contestants onto the fie ld for
the decisive climax. This is the heart of The Tain, and this la tte r
half is bracketed by two scenes of starkly delineated body function—
Maeve*s urination at the beginning of "The Battle at the Ford" and
Maeve's menstruation/urination at the close of "The Last Battle."
While no epic is without ambiguity (and certainly the fate of
Homer's heroes raises doubts as to the justice of their cause and
actions in the IIia d ) , The Tain is possibly the most misinterpreted of
ancient epics precisely because the 'obscene' urination/menstruation
episodes have been largely excused and ignored. But to ignore such
pointed emblematic presentations of Druid symbols is to efface a con
tro llin g metaphor in the text—for much of the 'meaning' of the cycle
hinges on the suggestiveness of these two symbolic acts.
W e know from studies of the oldest cycle, The Book of Invasions,
that stoppage of the urine was a druid tactic for defeating adversaries:
conversely, that normal flow of the bodily substances was a symbolic
equation for the a b ility to prevail. Maeve's fir s t urination scene
:324
comes mid-way in the Tain, as her champion Ferdiad takes leave of her
to meet Cuchulain at the ford. But Ferdiad is killed in the battle:
momentarily, at le a s t,iit appears that the ancient formula of urina
tion = domination is no longer a potent force. However, in the larger
context of the cycle, Maeve's urination in this scene proves to be an
ominous portent of her power to prevail. For Cuchulain's victory over
Ferdiad is a Pyrrhic one in every sense—especially the sp iritu al. In
truth, Cuchulain loses much more by his victory than does the subject
of Stephen's history lesson in Ulysses: unlike Pyrrhus, Cuchulain
forfeits his honoi— he wins only by compromising the ethics of
champion combat, and k ills his foster-brother dishonorably; a grief
which haunts him for the remainder of his brief life . Ferdiad1s last
words to Cuchulain are prophetic:
0 Cu of grand feats.
Unfairly am I slain!
Thy g u ilt clings to me;
M y blood fa lls on thee!
N o meed for the wretch
W ho treads treason's gap,
Now weak is m y voice;
Ah, gone is m y bloom!
Unfair, side by side,
To come to the ford.
'Gainst m y noble ward.
Hath Medb turned m y hand!
There w ill come rooks and crows
To gaze on m y arms
To eat flesh and blood
A ta le , Cu, for thee!12
325
I t w ill, of course, be yet another victory tale to add to Cuchulain's
boastful store. I t is as well a figuration of Cuchulain's fate, i f he
w ill but understand. I f Cuchulain's warrior-prowess seems to thwart
Maeve's design at this moment, we are nonetheless reminded of the
awful price of opposing her implacable w ill. Grief-stricken through he
is , Cuchulain remains oblivious to the deeper implications—as he has
been to every om en vouchsafed to him throughout the cycle: his horse
whipping by Fann's emissaries, his rejection of "King Buan's daughter"
(see Kinsella, Tain, p. 133), and most forcefully, his confrontation
and opposition to the female principle in "The Cattle-Raid of Regam-.
na"—one of the pro-tales designed, as Cross and Slover point out,
13
"to explain the central epic." This emblematic set-piece is not a
c a ttle -ra id , but Cuchulain's dream about the battle at the ford. In
the dream, Cuchulain encounters "a chariot harnessed with a chestnut
horse. The horse had but one leg, and the pole of the chariot passed
through its body so that the peg in front met the halter passing across
its forehead. Within the chariot sat a woman, her eye-brows red, and
a crimson mantle around her." The woman, whose description is similar
to Maeve's own, is accompanied by a m an walking beside the chariot
leading a cow. The condition of the horse alone is enough to signal
us that the dream prefigures a world turned upside down: the benevo
lent horse aspect of god is mutiliated, a pagan approximation of our
fam iliar crucifixion emblem. W hen Cuchulain attempts to argue the
pair out of possession of the cow, he is met by riddles, and becoming
326
enraged he threatens the wom an at sword-point. "Thy shaking of thy
weapon over m y head w ill not influence me" is her imperturbed response,
at which the mutilated horse, the chariot, man, and cow vanish—and
the w om an reveals her third aspect by flying to a nearby tree in the
form of a black bird, the Morrigu. Realizing at last who she is ,
Cuchulain remains stubbornly bellicose and arrogant: "Thou cans't not
harm me," he boasts. Her answer is even, quiet, and deadly: "Certain
ly I can . . . I am guarding thy death-bed, and I shall be guarding i t
henceforth. I brought this cow out of the fairy-mound of Cruachan so
that she might be bred by the bull . . . namely the Donn of Cooley. So
long as her calf shall be a yearling, so long thy life shall be; and
i t is this that shall cause the Cattle Raid of Cooley." W illfu lly un-
repentent, Cuchulain's answer is "My nam e shall be a ll the more re- 1
nowned in consequence of the Cattle-Raid," and while they contest ver
bally the outcome of the battle at the ford, Cuchulain's single-visioned
masculine pride blinds him utterly to the true nature of the present
conflict and the prefigured one: she warns him, "I and all behind m e
w ill rush into the ford, and the 'faithfulness of men' w ill be brought
to the test that day, and thy head shall be cut off from thee'.'t:(empha
sis mine). I t is not Cuchulain's lite ra l head that is cut off from
him in the battle of the ford— i t is his elder brother Ferdiad, his
leader and mentor, who is lost to him forever by his own hand. Macbeth-
lik e , Cuchulain simply fa ils to read the Morrigu's true meaning. He
persists in his defiance of the female principle and ultimately we
327
1
w ill see him beheaded as the "Raven of Battle" perches on his shoul-
der-4;the tableau foreshadowed succinctly in Ferdiad's dying words, "A
ta le , Cu, for thee," at the end of "The Battle at the Ford." I f i t is
"no light thing to struggle and strive with Cuchulain on the Tain," i t
is graver s t i l l , from the larger perspective, to oppose the w ill of
Maeve; for in the larger framework, this is a contest between the
Mare-god's w ill and men's faithfulness to the old belief. Ferdiad's
death is a symbol of Cuchulain's (and Ulster's) failu re in the "test
of faithfulness," and Maeve's urination preceding Cuchulain's b itte r-,
est.personal agony on the Tain emphasizes both the nature and the in
evitable outcome of their symbolic opposition.
Moreover, despite the ceaseless carnage, the incredible piling-up
of "men!§ meat," and the "countless" victories of the Hound, Cuchu
lain's astonishing single-handed heroics are circumscribed by the fact
that Maeve has captured the bull very early in the raid: she is hold
ing i t at the time of Ferdiad's death, and maintains possession of i t
throughout the war. Despite everything the Hound can do--and admitted
ly i t is much— he cannot reverse the capture of the bull. Maeve has
willed i t , and despite Cuhculain's victories, Fergus' treacherous pact
with him, the rising of the Ulstermen from their pangs, or even Fergus'
prearranged flig h t from the fie ld which sends Maeve's forces into dis
orderly retreat—despite a ll of i t , Maeve's w ill prevails. She never
loses possession of the Bull. In the end the bull s.w ill fight and die
as she has promised; and she and A ilill will be restored to precise
328
equality once more. Within the great outer circle of Maeve's struggle
to restore balance of power, the fates of the warriors mirror that of
the bulls. While the warriors may rail against Maeve, transfer their
own obstinacy and pride onto her, blame her for their ow n failin gs—
nonetheless they are bound to play out the pattern of the grand design.
As Ulysses is contained by its 'Trojan Horse' Marion Bloom, the Ulster
cycle is contained by the w ill of the Mare-god.
The essence of that great outer ring--matriarchal versus patriar
chal visions--which contains the Ulster cycle, is chrystal1ized in the
closing moments of "The Last Battle." The catalyst is the embittered
Fergus, and the symbolic vehicle is menstruation. In "The Last Battle"
Fergus appears in a form we should never expect from reading Yeats'
'creamy-dreamy' treatment of him. Here, a dispossessed Fergus carves
a bloody path through his kinsmen to reach the hated usurper, Con-
chubar. In mid-career he is taunted by Conall Cernach--"You rage very
14
hard at your kith and kin . . . for the sake of a whore's backside."
Conall alludes to queen Maeve; but the taunt recalls other females
who have contributed to Fergus' lossesr-vengeful Nessa and hapless
Dierdre. Goaded to fury, Fergus turns the entire battle in Maeve's
favor--though for quite private motives--and at last the deposed^king
confronts his usurper, covered by his "singing" shield. "'What m an of
Ulster holds that shield?' Fergus said. 'A better m an than you,'
Conchobar said, 'one who drove you out to live in exile with the
wild dogs . . . .The ringing blows of Fergus' sword on Conchubar's
329
shield rouses Cuchulain from the stupor of his desperate wounds, and
he rushes to the rescue. He reminds Fergus that early in the Cattle
Raid he retreated before Fergus in return for Fergus' vow that Fergus
would do the same at the last battle. '" I promised to do th a t,1 said
Fergus. ' I t has fallen due,' Cuchulain said . . . Fergus went off with
his troop." Fergus' abrupt tail-turning triggers panic among the a l
lied forces, the m en of Galeoin and the m en of Munster follow his
troops, leaving " . . . Medb and Ail i l l to the battle, with their seven
sons and their nine troops of three thousand . . .""to face Ulster
alone. Against overwhelming odds, the Connaught forces cannot hold the
line alone, and the battle becomes a rout. I t is, fin a lly , Fergus'
divided loyalties and devious motives that rob Maeve of her complete
triumph over Ulster. Fergus is a complex product of the forces im
pinging on a ll of the characters in the*.cycle: dishonored through no
fault of his own, dispossessed of his kingdom, b itte r, woman-hating,
ungrateful, a betrayer—Fergus is a ll of these. His one remaining
loyalty to the youthful Ulster Achilles Cuchulain lends pathos to his
fallen image. Nonetheless, his bitterness and betrayal of the female
principle are primary factors in the symbolic exchange which forms the
denouement of "The Last Battle." Maeve's forces are now in disorderly
retreat, but:
Medb had set up a shelter of shield to guard the rear of
the m en of Ireland. She had sent off the Brown Bull of
Cuailnge to Cruachan by a roundabout road . . . so that,
whoever escaped, the Brown Bull . . . would be got safely
away, as she had sworn.
330
Then Medb got her gush of blood. 'Fergus,' she said,
'take over . . . until I relieve myself.'
'By god,1 said Fergus, 'you have picked a bad time
for t h is .'
'I can't help i t , ' Medb said. ' I ' l l die i f I can't
do i t . '^5
Clearly, the menstruation here parallels the Druid urination emblem.
I f Maeve's symbolic bodily processes are stopped (lik e the nymph's in
Circe,) she will lose her " life " — her powers in a ll senses. In
O'Rahilly's translation, the Druidic symbols are conflated: O'Rahilly
gives the passage:
Then her issue of blood came upon Medb (and she said,
'0 Fergus, cover) the retreat . . . that I may pass m y
water . . . ' I t is ill-tim ed and i t is not right to do
so.' 'Yet I cannot but do so,' said Medb, 'for I shall
not live unless I d o .'16
O'Rahilly's treatment is less terse and liv e ly than Kinsella's,-but
gives us perhaps a closer approximation of the emblematic nature of the
exchange: i t seems, as well, closer to the s p irit of Joyce's own
recreation with its phrase "ill-tim ed ", and the more openly ambiguous
"I shall not live . . . "
In either version--as indeed, in older versions like O'Grady's and
Hyde's which did not attempt to Bowdlerize the scene, "Maeve's issue"
is , as Molly would say, "simply sickening." Maeve's combined menstua-
tion/urination carves out "three great trenches in each of which a
household can f i t . " The gigantism here serves the same purpose as
Joyce's blending of Molly's menstruation with the sea—i t emphasizes
the superhuman stature of the character. The menstruation in The Tain,
331
permanently resculpting the landscape as i t does, recalls the similar
function of early gods in Invasions: there, leaders of each invasion
wave le ft their mark on the land in terms of new lakes, changed river-
courses, revealed caves, etc. Marking of the physical landscape was of
great mystical import to the Celts—as aerial photographs of h ill-fo rts ,
the great Running Horse, and other m am m oth configurations reveal today.
Thus, Maeve's menstruation reinforces her symbolic prevalence. Kin-
sella translates this permanent marking in eponymous terms: "The place
is called Fual Medba, Medb's Foul Place, ever since."—certainly the
g rittie s t of all interpretations; but the ugliness of the term does
not diminish the force of the act. While the original legend uses
Maeve's gush as a symbol .of: raw power,; Joyce, recasts : the. image to suit
his ow n concern with a rtis tic power. Without forfeiting the gigantism
of his female persona, his expansion of the menstrual image into the
deepdown torrent of the crimson sea elevates Molly's power to empha
size vast beauty. In Joyce's hands, the menstruation becomes poetic,
and links his Molly back through Maeve, and her predecessor Macha,
to the elder Danu—Genetrix of Art.
The.remainder of the original menstruation scene provides a sharp
ironic, reminder of the larger theological implications of the Ulster
cycle:
Medb said to Fergus:
'W e have had shame and shambles here today, Fergus.'
'We followed the rump of a misguiding woman,'
332
Fergus said, ' I t is the usual thing for a herd led
by a mare to be strayed and destroyed.'17
Obviously, the "shame and shambles" Maeve refers to is Fergus' own—
his prearranged retreat which precipitates the rout of her forces.
Fergus' reply to the queen is outrageous in the extreme. Fergus is
ever the unregenerate Ulsterman and belligerant r a ille r against the
supremacy of the Mare. His retort is doubly ironic, insofar as Fergus,
after laying his own failu re on Maeve's shoulders, nonetheless follows
the rump of this wom an back to the sanctuary of her kingdom—where he
w ill continue to live under her generosity and protection. In this
epic test, the faithfulness of m en is revealed as dubious at best.
But the v ita lity of the deity, attested by the continued flow of her
bodily substances, endures.
The Tain shows us the last triumph of the great queen god of the
Celts—but i t is a qualified triumph. While she has secured the bull
and restored the balance of her 'marriage,' she has not reconciled
Uster: she is s t ill vulnerable to the threat of rising patriarchal
pressures as symbolized in Fergus' attitude. She presides, but the
serpent has entered the garden. The Ulster cycle is the last of the
ancient Irish works to depict the Mare-god's symbolic 'gush' of body
flu id . W e do not see so frank an emblem agin in Irish literatu re until
Joyce revived i t in the closing moments of Ulysses. But is Molly's
menstrual flow enough to establish the dominance of the female prin
ciple in Joyce's text? Once we have added the Celtic allusions and
“ 333
design to the more fam iliar symbolic configurations, the real question
of Joyce’s novel becomes whether or not the old "one powerful god" is
any longer a f i t adversary for the sky-gods of patriarchy. Can Molly
really be seen as an adequate match for the thunder-and-1ightning god
who seeks to eclipse her forever?
Joyce has cunningly devised an answer for this. An answer, more
over which synthesizes Molly and Stephen with such suggestive subtlety
as to make their confluence, fin a lly , the ultimate unifying factor of
the book. Molly’ s union with the young stranger is expressed in a
variety of parallels; but beyond the obvious a rtis tic coincidences,
there is a sustained theological link between the young seeker and the
Mare-god which rests, outrageously enough, on an elaborate punning with
their references to "plums."
Near the close of the coda, Molly relinquishes her momentary
schemes for either seducing money from Bloom or seducing his young
'p rize .' Thwarted by her sudden menses she exclaims with humorous re
signation "0 but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a thing pfooh
you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry were such a mixture of plum and
apple" (p. 781). In this careless l i t t l e idiomatic phrase the "apple"
admixture is a clear enough allusion to Genesis and the Eve archetype.
"Plum" however is not so easily identified; i f half of this contem
porary Irishwoman is composed of Eve, with the sorrow of her g u ilt,
what does the-other half—the "plum" or "laughing" part consist in?
Coupled with the menstrual image, one's immediate conjection is that
334
the "plum" half of the equation must allude to a counterbalancing Cel
tic theological referent. But the Celtic 'scriptures' yield no symbo
lic reference to plums. In fact, the only 'theological' appearance of
plums in the entire spectrum of possible derivations here is Stephen's
own "Parable of the Plums." Molly's symbolic 'other half' then is de
pendent for its derivation not on a Celtic tradition outside the novel,
but on Stephen's own prophet-playing invention within i t . In the most
playful of ways, Stephen is as much responsible for a part of Molly-s
derivation as is Homer or any of the other great traditions which pro
vide her prototypes and definitions. Stephen, to this extent, also has
a hand in Molly's creation.
O n Stephen's side, the connection begins very early in ' ProteusV,
when, seeing the midwives, he fancifully imagines that umbilical tele
phone call back to the wom b: "Hello. Kinch here. Put m e on to Eden-
v ille . Aleph, Alpha: nought, nought, one'.'4 ; (p. 38). The repeated
"Aleph" and "Alpha", fir s t letters o f. the Hebrew and Greek alphabets,
underscores primacy with that same redundancy which Tindall noted in
Gaea-Tellus—earth-earth—as underscoring the principle tr a it of the
Greek primal being. Again, the "nought^ nought, one" repeats the
emphasis that this being was not fecundated by two prior beings, but
wrought herself out of nothing—as Gaea-Tellus emerged alone out of
chaos. In 'Proteus', Stephen conflates Hebrew and Greek elements in a
playful construct of the primal mother. (Bloom, too, in 'Oxen,' envi
sions M illy's sign as Alpha—f ir s t ) .
335.
The whimsical l i t t l e conceit is greatly enlarged in 'Aeolus',
while Stephen is tellin g his parable. The central characters in the
parable are those sam e two midwives that prompted Stephen's telephone
whimsey. Joyce's outrageous reversal of sexual symbolism, in which
the two old "waddlers" with their plum-stones become the source of the
phallic tower's 'ejaculation' is yet one more hilarious twist of the
patriarchal lion's t a il. But something more happens, in the outer
frame surrounding Stephen's parable, that has far more serious symbo
lic impact than the sexual reversals within the parable. Indeed,
'Aeolus' is like nothing so much as a nest of frames-within-frames, in
which Joyce carefully arranges a ll the significant emblems of his novel
in their corresponding perspectives. 'AeoluS' begins with IN THE HEART
O F THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS--metaphorically and lite r a lly at Nelson's
P illa r, emblem of male supremacy and domination on a ll levels here.
The 'circulation1 of the c ity , the tram-cars, is activated, moreover,
in racing parlance: "— Rathgar and Terenure! - Com e on, Sandymount
Green 1 . . . - Start, Palmerston park!" Threads of phallic symbolism,
horse-racing, and telephone conversations are carried deftly along from
the opening until suddenly, catching Stephen in mid-parable, an inter
ruption occurs—not merely to Stephen's re c ita l, but to the entire
heart of the metropolis around Nelson's P illa r. In the text the inci
dent is set o ff by the headline HELLO THERE, CENTRAL!—reca'l1ing once
more Stephen's earlier telephone metaphor in 'Proteus.' What happens
in the larger framework surrounding Stephen and his listeners is a
336
failure of the entire electrical system—and radiating out from the
speaker and his audience Joyce shows us:
At various points along eight lines tramcars with motion
less trolleys stood on their tracks, bound for or from
. . . . a ll s t i l l , becalmed in short circ u it.
Meanwhile, however:
Hackney cars, cabs, delivery wagons . . . aerated miner
al water floats with rattlin g crates of bottles, rattled,
lo lled , horsedrawn, rapidly (p. 149).
While Myles Crawford queries the W H A T? - A ND LIKEWISE - W H ER E? of
the parable and its f r u it, the "sophomore1 1 Stephen declares "I call i t
A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or the Parable of the Plums. " Stephen1s
auditors, from their perspective, see at best a comic inversion of
Moses' view of the Promised Land, at worst no more than a pi Idly
lewd phallic jib e . Joyce's readers, however, gazing down at the outer
frame which surrounds the characters' preoccupation with the parable,
see a much larger metaphoric comment on quite a different Promised
Land. W e have before our eyes the image of the arterial circulation
of the c ity , attached to electrical power, reduced to stasis—while that
part yet relying on the older horse-power remains v ita l, its juices
(underscored by "mineral water floats") continuing to flow "rapidly."
The message from "Central" here seems quite strong. While the powers
of the lightning gods Thor, or Zeus, or Jehovah--or, as Poldy would
see i t , the simple phenomenon of e le c tric ity — have failed , the power
of the horse, in all senses, goes forward unimpeded.
337:
The significance of "plum" thus lies imbedded, like a seed, within
a larger paradigm of male and female power emblems. So i f apples are
the symbol of the fir s t female's g u ilt and weakness, plums—with a bit
of interventive prompting from "Central"—becomes in Ulysses a symbol
of the fir s t female's power. The seeds raining down from Nelson's .
P illa r in Stephen's parable have their source in women; the circula
tion through the heart of Ireland's capital is more reliably generated
by the horse. And i f the seeds fa ll on stoney ground, i t is perhaps
because the listeners and watchers cannot or w ill not recognize the
true source of power illuminated by this fleeting frame-tale. "Such a
mixture of plum and apple" indeed leaves l i t t l e to choose between
laughter and tears. Young Stephen chooses derisive laughter here (he
has not fallen or been revived at this point). Joyce and his Molly r'".
w ill also choose laughter, but the generous laughter of old wisdom.
I f , as Ellmann contends, the book its e lf is a Trojan Horse armed
for battle, then its finest weapons, like the ancient_ollamh's, are
Molly's strongest attributes—frankness and laughter. And the one
great goal toward which all of the horse imagery of Ulysses moves is a
condemnation of patriarchy on a ll levels. By resurrecting the Mare-
god, Joyce is offering an historically particular and humanly universal
alternative answer to the s te r ility and isolation of the modern uni
verse. Like his feminist mentor Ibsen, Joyce is determined to answer
the patriarchal chorus of Zimmers, Freuds, Jungs, Eliots, Frazers, and
Strindbergs by showing them that they simply have not seen Western
338
civilizatio n steadily or whole: that their perspective is foreshor-, :
tened by their immersion in their own traditions, and by the nine
teenth-century rush to reductive interpretation of symbols. Unlike
Ibsen, Joyce had discovered a powerful set of historical allusion to
strengthen his position. Responding to the impetus of Zimmer and
others, Joyce quite neatly turned the Revival premises inside-out.
Scorning the confines of received tradition, Joyce resurrected an
astonishing god indeed— but a persuasive one. As so many Joyce scho
lars have attested, there can be l i t t l e doubt that Joyce viewed his
endeavor in religious earnest—an attitude revealed in his playful but
pointed le tte r to Monnier: "Following m y most secret conception, I've
taken a ll the thorns . . . off her. I've only le t her keep the last—
18
her Irish accent. I t wouldn't give way." Playing on theiimagery
of the Descent from the Cross, Joyce set about releasing the Rose
from the rood of time.
Through Molly Bloom, Joyce offers us poignant contact with the
beautiful lost s p irit of his race, and with a larger world that we have
long forgotten. W hen Molly says "I always knew wed go away in the end,"
she speaks for the Celtic race, inexorably pushed into the Western sea;
and she speaks as well for all the fir s t gods of mankind— Nut, Is is ?
Danu, and of course Joyce's special mistress, Epona. What wistful
sorrow there is in the voice of God saying "youve no chances at a ll in
this place like you used to long ago." And yet, despite i t a ll, Joyce
shows us that, however scarified or distorted, the great force s t ill
339
manages to survive, to affirm , and fin a lly to prevail, with or without
recognition. Molly remains, the female lock that holds the garden gate
securely closed. Joyce w ill not say whether the wandering keys w ill
ever remember to w hom they belong, and reopen the garden to mankind.
But he does allow the possibility, i f not the probability, of that
return. And whether or not the modern Waste Land ever achieves re
conciliation of its isolated male and female components, Mr. Joyce has
succeeded in resolving all of his conflicts. With Ulysses, Joyce re
surrected the conscience of a whole race, and assured immortality to
a ll of his mothers.
340,
Notes
' ^ Kinsella, p. 52.
O
Consciousness of James Joyce, p. 43.
8 Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study (New York:
Vintage Press, 1955), p. 398.
^ William York Tindall, James Joyce: His W ay of Interpreting the
Modern World (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), p. 37.
8 Op. c i t . , p. 36.
6 Op. c i t , , p. 113.
7 Richard Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey (New York: Oxford Uni
versity Press, 1973), p. 173.
8 Op. c i t . , p. 175.
Q
Cross and Slover, p. 282.
Op. c i t . , p. 283.
^ James Joyce, A Portrait of the A rtist as a Young Man (New York:
Viking Press, 1966), p. 188.
^ Cross and Slover, p. 320.
Op. c i t . , pp. 211-214.
Kinsella, p. 247.
341
^5 Op. c i t . , p. 250.
16 O'Rahilly, p. 270.
^^ Kinsella, p. 251.
18
As quoted in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, p. 573.
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