Bloomsday Centennial!

[jackelope]

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed...

Yes folks, it's June 16, 2004, the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday! Even Google (http://www.google.com/) is getting into the act; this strikes me as a great day to go downtown in whatever city you live in and spend the day walking around, ever alert for the mythic parallels of your mundane actions. (Bonus points, of course, if you live in Dublin.)

I was lucky enough to study Ulysses in 1993 with Hugh Kenner, who passed away just a few months ago, never to see the year 101 AJ (Anno Joyce). I remember the relish with which he discussed Stephen's conversation, in Nestor, with his boss Mr. Deasy: - Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't know yet what money is. Money is power, when you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy purse.

- Iago, Stephen murmured.My favorite trivium from the novel, though, is relevant to the passage in Ithaca (the "catechism" chapter):Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?

Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman, prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and glow-lamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees....According to Hugh Kenner (I haven't tried to verify this myself), in the Dublin Daily Telegraph of June 16, 1904, there was an article on page 3 (which Stephen would have been facing in the Eumaeus section as Bloom, across the table from him, had folded the paper around to read page 2) on "the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and glow-lamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees." I.e., Stephen read it, then as they were walking home he recalled it while looking at how the trees grew by the streetlights and brought it up.

Happy Bloomsday!

[Biffy the Elephant Shrew]

Yes.

[Nonsuch]

I'm afraid I refused to start my day with a kidney breakfast.

[E. Thorp]

I'm afraid I refused to start my day with a kidney breakfast.
All out of relish?

[Colophon]

I'm afraid I refused to start my day with a kidney breakfast.

Not even for a fine tang of faintly scented urine?

[lissener]

That's my favorite passage, the kidney passage. I used to have it memorized (mememorme!) but it's gone. Wait . . . He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes.


And Thorp, was I whooshed? you do realize there was no relish in that passage; only relishment, as it were?

[E. Thorp]

And Thorp, was I whooshed? you do realize there was no relish in that passage; only relishment, as it were?

Opening of "Calypso" (chapter 4): "Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."

Relish, the emotional attitude, or relish, the condiment? Knowing Joyce, probably both.

[lissener]

Opening of "Calypso" (chapter 4): "Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."

Relish, the emotional attitude, or relish, the condiment? Knowing Joyce, probably both.
Pretty positive it was not the condiment. "Relish" as a generic term that means the green stuff you put on hot dogs is a relatively modern concept. I'd imagine if that's what Joyce meant he'd have said "a relish." As it stands, I'm pretty positive he meant the "emotional attitude."

That Joyce often layered meanings doesn't in any way mean that he was imprecise in his language. And that passage is not really one of his pun-layered Finnegans Wake arias.

[lissener]

sorry, also meant to point out that "Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls" is a very general statement: he follows it by describing in more detail which inner organs, which beasts, which fowls. To imagine that Joyce meant the hot-dog condiment is to suggest that Joyce was suggesting that, no matter the organ, no matter the beast or fowl, Bloom slathered it in relish. Not the sense I get at all.

[Eonwe]

.
..

[jackelope]

.Nice. Ithaca's always been my favorite.

[E. Thorp]

Pretty positive it was not the condiment. "Relish" as a generic term that means the green stuff you put on hot dogs is a relatively modern concept. I'd imagine if that's what Joyce meant he'd have said "a relish." As it stands, I'm pretty positive he meant the "emotional attitude."

That Joyce often layered meanings doesn't in any way mean that he was imprecise in his language. And that passage is not really one of his pun-layered Finnegans Wake arias.

With all due respect...

I don't have ready access to the OED, but according to the Online Eytmology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/) (which seems reliable enough for a friendly disagreement) the sense of "condiment" is attested to 1797. That doesn't seem "relatively modern" to me.

As for imprecision, because "relish" means more than one thing a reader can, if she wishes, get a momentary chuckle from a throwaway pun. Suggesting that Bloom may have seasoned some of his meals (no slathering is implied) with the condiment called relish is not the point of the passage but does it no harm either. Joyce puns on purpose, doesn't need an aria to do it, and the echo is easy enough to hear. There's nothing imprecise about that. On the contrary, it is a small reward for an attentive reader.

All this literary debate arising, alas, from my own clumsy joke of this morning. Liver and learn, I guess.