HMR on Ulysses

Finished it. It is very complex and requires close reading. He writes beautifully and makes his characters powerfully alive complete and complex  human beings that you care about.

I really enjoyed it and thought it worth the effort. Joyce uses a lot of Latin, Greek phrases, Irish songs, sayings and archaic Irish phrases. He modeled it to a degree on the Odyssey. He also includes allusions (often cryptic) to Greek myths, Catholic theology and history, the Old Testament, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Dante and various poets and philosophers. His erudition is mind boggling. At its core, Ulysses deals with his condemnation of the oppression of Jews by the Catholic Church and the Irish by the British Empire, which he sees as similar. He doesn’t believe in the legitimacy of either. Life should be lived in the present by people, free from the limitations of oppressive systems. He sees art as redemptive and enriching the material life.

In his correspondence, he worries that he may have over systematized the work. I think his concern was valid. He also remarked that he had insured its endurance by giving scholars so many puzzles (real and imagined) to solve. He was certainly right about that.

I decided to read each book and then read through Gifford’s Annotations for the phrases and allusions that I either didn’t understand or had missed. I concluded that many scholars try too hard to ingeniously tie the work the Odyssey, a myth or a philosopher. Much of the work seems to me to have little or no real connection with the Odyssey.

After I finished, I read Ellman’s Ulysses on the Liffey which I thought was illuminating, but too clever by half in some parts. Joyce, himself, in his correspondence changed his position on what the meaning was and what referred to what.

But, I don’t mean to give a negative impression. It is brilliantly comedic and alive. I am very glad to have read it. I will now turn to higher matter such as the new Lee Child work.