The Story Starts This Way...

The story starts with three young men in a tower—Buck Milligan, Stephen Dedalus and Haines. I know it is a tower-like structure because according to my “companion” Robert Ellmann, Joyce lived in the Martello tower in Sandycove when he was about twenty-one, right after his mother had died and during the time he had returned to Dublin from Trieste. The tower was one of seventy-four which the British had hastily put up along the English and Irish coasts in 1804 in fear of a French invasion.

Oliver St. John Gogarty, another Dublin writer and a kind-of friend of Joyce’s, leased the tower, which he called Omphalos (naval structure). The third renter or guest in the tower was Samuel Chenevix Trnch, the model for the Haines character.

Here is the story behind this opening scene, according to Ellmann: On the night of September 14, Trench had a nightmare about a black panther, and began to shoot at it with a gun. Gogarty got the gun away and added a barrage of his own, aimed at the pots and pans above Joyce’s bed. Upon this action, Joyce dressed, left, ended the friendship with Gogarty (which was on the rocks, anyway, since Joyce had recently written a pamphlet ridiculing most of the Dublin writers, Gorgarty included), as well as his relationship with Ireland.

The incident is significant for two reasons—Joyce early on had decided to have this be the opening scene for his great book Ulysses, and he determined that night to be done once and for all with Ireland.

Stephen Dedalus is a sympathetic character—moody, very Irish, wears hand-me-downs from Mulligan, broods about the tower, and is subservient or, at least differential to the other two. Mulligan is also Irish, probably more Anglo-Irish—he’s self-assured, dismissive of Dedalus’ brooding and quite confident; in the end, he demands the key to the tower, though Stephen Dedalus pays the rent.

The theme of the 1st episode is the conflict within Stephen about his recently-deceased mother and how he had not granted her last wish—to kneel and pray with him. The guilt is shown in a brilliantly relayed dream, which Milligan dismisses. Milligan senses that Stephen has a problem with him. Stephen finally admits that Milligan had insulted Stephen when he had dismissed the death of his mother with an off-hand remark. “Don’t mope over it all day, he [Mulligan] said. I’m inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding.”

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twinning stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twinning chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’ song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark cords. Her door was open; she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed.

Scholars read an immense amount of symbolism, mythology, imagery and literature into every word of Ulysses, but these two paragraphs, as well as Stephen Dedalus’ brooding manner, his sharply written memories and insight; the characters of Mulligan and Haines are really why James Joyce’s Ulysses should be read as a story not a piece of scholarship. By the end of this first episode, Joyce has created real characters in a real world with a real story.

The remaining parts of the episode are full of Shakespeare, Homer, Zarathustra, discussions about the Church and free thinkers, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and the imperial British State.

From a writers point of view (as opposed to the Joyce scholar), these topics are all legitimate topics for three young, educated and literate Irishmen to discuss on a freewheeling morning. Joycean scholars read each of these topics as Joyce predicted that they would—tediously trying to figure out what he meant.

Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael’s host, who defends her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.
Hear, hear. Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!
--Of course I’m a Britisher, Haines’ voice said, and I feel as one…”

The above is just one example throughout the first episode of the smooth transition from Stephen Dedalus’ inner monologue (his famous stream of consciousness) to the world of acquaintances swirling about him.

Again, scholars dissect every word of this beginning episode. However the story is there, the characters are developed, the technique is art and the dialog is real. A real story with real people in a real world—that should be the joy of this odyssey.

A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water, round.
Usurper.

In the end, as the three young men part down near the sea, Mulligan demands the key to the tower even though Stephen pays the rent—the word Usurper enters Stephen’s head as he leaves them.

Perhaps you need to be Irish Catholic to appreciate this scene and the dialog; perhaps you need to have lived or spent time in Dublin; perhaps you need to be a Joycean--in any case--so far this story works for me.

I see now, too, Homer is going to have to be one of my "companions" during this year and a day.

I'll be posting as I read the story---comment as you wish. However, all you Joyce scholars--remember I'm reading Ulysses as a story not a tome.