Thank you for this video, I've studied Dubliners and high school and just decided to tackle Ulysses in english even though it's my second language. I really hope I'll manage to read it and appreciate it, it is a very big challenge !
Thanks for the comment Manon. You've a Quebec sounding name, I say that because I grew up in Montreal. The point I'm always trying to make with regards to Joyce and Ulysses is that it's actually easier and yet much deeper than most people would have you think. All it is is the simple story of the twenty two or three year old James Joyce's awakening to Life's fullest and deepest wonder in this world we, you and I and everyone else, inhabit today. That's why the video that follow's this one is titled James Joyce's Ulysses, Awakening to the Wonder. But now I have a few more planned, simple synoptic overviews of what's really going on beneath the fancy and stylish wordplay of each episode. Mainly because with all the verbose reviews available who is recounting in plain and simple English what's actually taking place, never mind all the learned shite that gets in the way. Anyway, thanks again and best of luck.
I'm French actually, so that make sense that you'd hear my name in Montreal I guess ! ;) I just finished the first episode, it was a bit challenging, I did not get many things, but it was a pleasant read, especially because I read it out loud and it made a huge difference, and also made me appreciate the poetic aspect of Joyce's writing. So many rhymes !
Ah, chapter one. Three young men on the threshold of fully fledged adulthood. Buck the young man of science, medical student, witty, brash, mocking, Haines the young man of letters, more serious and one day no doubt a professor of English literature, and Dedalus/Joyce, neither young man of science nor of letters... the young shaman/artist/Buddha-to-be and one day writer of such masterpieces as Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Just for your information Ms. Vercouter (which didn't sound Quebecois, as there are actually a fairly limited range of last names due to historic circumstances), I've a Free Books App on my iPhone with which I've downloaded a free Librevox audiobook version of the book. So far the first episode is the worst reading of it.
The best part of your comments are- just read it. I started down the road to Ulysees while visiting William and Marys bookstore with my parents on vacation when I was 14 or 15. Long before going off to university, I bought the book and my parents said it was okay to read since it was literature. Once I started in 1965 or 1966 till today I have read this book a number of times, visited Dublin 1/2 dozen times, taken both of my sons there and still find something new each time I pick it up. Once you get into it you realize you may need to pick up another copy or two and bookBut most important just read it.
Have studied this favorite book of mine for decades. Of all the criticism etc., you simply have to read two books by Joyce biographer Richard Ellmann: "James Joyce," the bio; and, "Ulysses on the Liffey," a very small but razor-accurate analysis of Joyce's goals and intentions and (yes) even his ethical/moral concerns in the book. Those will save you worlds of confusion and add worlds of delight to reading "Ulysses," I promise!
The advice I give people who are thinking about reading it is to start at chapter 4, and come back to the first 3 chapters later on. My favorite chapters are the Night town and the catechism chapters (I never remember their titles).
Tip # 2 is all I needed to hear.....I will get back to you when I have finished reading the WHOLE of it ....I have given up a number of times in the past...I thought some commentary might help...but....Thanks for the tip....sounds like good advice to me!
It's not easy, at first glance. Less because of all the capital 'L' literature people would have you believe than Stephen and Bloom's thoughts swirl, as our's do through the course of a day, back and forth, inside and out. Try my plainspoken synopsis of episodes one through five, they're meant to be a solid launching pad for the simple and yet profound stuff that's really going on in the book. All the best. And an audiobook version, I got mine off of iBooks, very well read, is easier to listen to than reading for the most part. That is, reading's fantastic, but if you drift or lose focus for a page you miss or skip the slow accumulation of thought and impression. Thanks for the comment.
Modernism had that “elitist” slant though. TS Eliot would tell people who didn’t understand The Wasteland that it was written for a more cultured readership.
And Damn, here's another tip I wish I included in the video, at the core of what I'm trying to get across. It's from Joseph Campbell's Creative Mythology (pg. 39). It goes: “Next, in Ulysses (1922) and The Magic Mountain (1924), two accounts of quests through all the mixed conditions of a modern civilization for an informing principle substantial to existence…” Woa, "quests through all the mixed conditions of a modern civilization for an informing principle substantial to existence...?" Sounds pretty serious.
By the way, Omphalos, you may want to consider both Stephen and Bloom as Joyce--since both characters are built out of Joyce's own memories. Molly, if I understand that part correctly, is based on Joyce's interview with several women--most importantly Nora, of course...still, if you read the episode closely, you will see eventually that Molly is also Joyce and built--which is to say, re-projected from his own memories.
Hello....I enjoyed very much your video and your tips on Ulysses. I m half the way through the book, having read Dubliners and Portrait before... also halted Ulysses in order to re read and dive deeply into Hamlet. I fully agree that reading Homer and the schema is not a pre-requisite for Ulysses and that everything is about Dedalus as Joyce's alter ego. Looking forward to more videos. Alex from Mar del Plata.... Argentina. Your best tip: just keep reading..
Hi Alex, I appreciate the comment. Haven't made a video in a couple of years now but contemplating getting back at it. My summary of the book is in my video James Joyce's Ulysses: Wake Up You Blockheads. Also there's James Joyce's Ulysses And The Failure Of Our Academic System. Not to mention a sort of chapter to chapter summary up to about nine or ten when I tired of the exercise. As far as Hamlet is concerned, I personally wouldn't bother. The real key to why no one understands the book is in the FACT that Joyce (as Dedalus) is telling the world exactly how he underwent a death to the modern world of Dublin and an artistic rebirth or awakening as the man of the world, under the (Buddhistic) 'heaven tree of stars' he writes of in episode 17, just as foreshadowed in the first chapters of A Portrait with his locating himself in the present and the universe. I am always reminded of Henry Miller's retelling of his own artistic death and resurrection in his Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy. Other parallels are Mann's Magic Mountain Odyssey through the land of the dead and Proust's death to the world and artistic birth in his cork lined room recapturing the significance of all that time lost. Regards, Jeff
Ompholou cafe was analyses of plot,characters& their interplay with one another was simply & understandable.Will up" Ulysses " to buy the next I go to market.
I appreciate the comment Radiant. Good luck and have fun with it. It's birth, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and mature adulthood, senescence and death. All packed in tightly, richly. Dammit, hopefully my next video on the subject will be out by the end of the week. All the best.
That's a simple enough question, Eli, and the answer is pretty simple too, but it depends on you. Why do you feel compelled to 'tackle' Ulysses? Is it a school project, or do you feel a desire to appear 'literate' in front of others? Have you done some homework and now feel ready for the challenge everyone claims the book is? And what else have you read up to this point in your life, and more importantly, why did you read them? I ask these questions because for the vast vast majority of people the answer is of course yes, read Dubliners and then A Portrait, and then if you're really serious you can look into Homer, naturally, and then Hamlet amongst a slew of others referenced in Ulysses. And of course you can watch every video on UA-cam, they all more or less say the exact same thing (I go over this in my video 'James Joyce's Ulysses And The Failure Of Our Academic System.') It's a great way to fit in with the faculty club crowd patting each other on the backs while quaffing a beer on Bloomsday, June 16th. However, if you feel slightly maladapted in this world of our's and deep down inside there's a profound craving for something more, a vague sense that all is not as it should be and the things your parents and society have taught you as you've grown into young adulthood simply don't jive with either your inner being nor the outer world and you crave in your heart a new relationship with yourself and the world about, that route probably won't satisfy you, in fact you'll end up wondering 'what was the point' after the 644 page ordeal, just as I did. This latter road, an arduous journey of discovery, not unlike that undertaken in The Razor's Edge, Miller's RosiCrucifixion Trilogy, the works of Hesse and Mann, Proust and many more, as summarized in Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces, is a longer voyage and it pretty much guarantees a break from the school route and conventionality, but it is well worth it and you might even end up with something worthwhile to share with others when you're done. The choice, as they say, is your's, and like I've said: 'Bloomsday is for the masses, Dedalusday for the few.' Good luck.
As to your contention that the third one, who wants Stephen for odd jobs, is "life," I have a different opinion. Recall as you note (10:31 on) that in Portrait, Stephen complains of three nets that "hold [the Irish soul] back from flight" (C. Anderson, Viking, p. 203): "nationality, language, religion." Then, compare the three constraints from Ulysses: "The imperial British state," "the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church," and a third "who wants me for odd jobs" (1.641). Firstly, if we "professors" go digging though the Ellmann biography, we will learn that young James of this age is being offered small writing jobs for the local papers (later Crawford will ask him to write something with bite, Episode Seven) and that Yeats and others had urged him to ply his talent on the then new Irish Theatre featuring works--originally only in Irish, then mostly in Irish. Now, if we don't want to play "professor," and just go with the text, this side reference might seem obscure; that is, until we examine the parallel with Episode Two, where (as you note) Stephen informs the Tory Deasy that he is trying to escape history...also, that he fears "those big words...which make us so unhappy" (2.264), "generosity" and "justice," i.e., the economic generosity of the British state (hence all the references to the money as "crowns" and "sovereigns") and the justice of the Catholic Church (hence all the references to sin). For his part, Deasy dreads the Jews...and the economic threat they pose to his beloved British State...and disgusts the acts of women such as Helen and Eve, for a "woman brought sin into the world" (2.390)...and a "woman too brought Parnell low" (2.394). So, secondly, based on literary parallelism, the three from Episode One almost match the three from Portrait, so why shouldn't the three from Episode Two line up? One: Church, the moral constraints of Catholicism and the original sin of Eve; Two: State, the British intellectuals (like Haines, who saw another Hamlet theory somewhere, the "Son striving to be atoned with the Father"--note the capitalization) and the UK economy (forcing Stephen to become a "distrait beggar"--again, read Hamlet if you like); so, three: Stephen's "odd jobs" should line up with the concern he expressed to Davin in Portrait about "language," the Episode One discussion with the old milkwoman about her native language, and Episode Two's "plot," which opens with three lessons on failure (a failed savior, Pyrrhus; a failed bridge, the Kingstown pier and, a failed sailor, Lycidas) and Deasy's letter which forces Stephen on his bullock-befriending mission to visit Crawford (the newspaper editor). In short, Stephen is concerned--with life, yeah, but aren't we all--right now he's worried about not having enough money to afford his own trousers and regretting having to sell his talent--either to Crawford or Artifoni (of course, as we learn in Episode Nine: he is the only Dana contributor "who asks for pieces of silver" (9.1081)...sooooo, frustrated that he cannot make a living by art, e.g., he is still stuck as "Young Man," not yet "Artist," he whines and pisses about having to get his pretty little hands dirty with paid-writing (or, what the Greeks called pornography--as in what Bloom is buying that afternoon). Again, just my opinion.
Well Nick, Such a load of words and learning. I don't really have a reply to all that thought and opinion beyond what I expressed in my video 'James Joyce's Ulysses and the Failure of our Educational System.' I'm not trying to be rude or dismissive when I say this, but you and your learning do not belong here at the Omphalos Cafe. I've been forthright about that in several videos, saying and fully meaning: this place is not for everyone. What's going on here, for want of better terms, is on a different plain of experience, a different dimension. It's a case of Apples and Oranges, or much more accurately, Oranges and Golden Apples. I just went in to my compendium of quotes for something apt to the moment here, and while there were a good dozen that might have served I've settled for this simple one which will serve for the intent of my videos and Joyce's work as a whole: "The satori plane can never be reached by the rationalistic plane, however ingeniously it may be handled."- D.T. Suzuki, Living By Zen, pg. 94 All the best, Nick, but please spare the Cafe your opinion in the future.
These 'six tips' are delivered in a very highbrow, obscure fashion that renders them quite useless to the everyday reader taking on the novel. Tip #1 is relatively useless. I think the presenter is alluding to Joyce's evolving literary method, which demanded more reader interpretation of the available text, due to a lack of overt authorial reflection or narrative commentary within that text. The reader is left to pick up on repeated allusions and motifs, both on a micro and macro level, and to garner understanding through the context of the surrounding text. Joyce's aesthetic development is actually a theme of the earlier novel A Portrait of the Artist, but it cannot be considered a theme of Ulysses. I Don't understand how this constitutes a helpful 'tip' to aid comprehension I agree with tip #2 to a degree. Yes just read the novel, but your comprehension will be aided by two factors: 1) Reading Joyce's earlier novels Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist prior to tackling Ulysses 2) Getting hold of a good guide as well as a student edition of the novel with annotations. The presenter is 100% correct when he states that you do not need to have an understanding of Homer's Odyssey, as Joyce mainly uses the classical plot to give structure to his text rather than meaning, so although a knowledge of it may provide some understanding of the allusions to the classical text, focusing upon it may actually detract from the overall plot, sub-plots and themes of Ulysses. Anyway, a good annotated text will draw attention to the Homeric structure and references for you. It is all well and good 'thinking for yourself' like Joyce, Bloom and Molly, but understanding is a product of scaffolding, we expand upon the knowledge we already have by making connections. A good guide is essential to understanding. Tip #3: At 8:45 'Wow!' - absolute nonsense that didn't 'blow my mind'. How does this help the everyday reader to comprehend the text and enjoy the experience. Joyce places enough information scattered throughout the text so that the reader can reach some kind of understanding - one which is particularly unique to them - so when the presenter, like other commentators, suggests that Joyce didn't care less if others understood his text, he is mistaken. Joyce leaves the level and extent of any understanding firmly with the reader, be they an academic literary professional or your average Joe. Tip#4: More nonsense - don't understand how focusing on Stephen aids comprehension. Yes, as everyone knows, Stephen is Joyce's younger literary incarnation, but Bloom is his older literary alter-ego. There are many nuanced similarities between the two characters, as noted by numerous critics, so that the eventually coming together of the pair amounts to a union of two halves. At 12:05 the presenter erroneously states that Stephen's reference to a 'third' entity that 'wants me for odd-jobs' represents 'life'. The 'third' is actually Mr Deasy, the Anglo-Irish headmaster who provides Stephen with part-time employment as a teacher. Tip#5: More nonsense. The reference to the 'keys' is just one of many repeated motifs throughout the novel. However, it is one example of the many methods Joyce uses to link his two main protagonists. Tip#6: This 'tip' has more potential than the rest, as the presenter notes the strong textual links between the two characters throughout the novel. My one and only tip to anyone reading the novel is as per tip#2. You do not need to be a highbrow intellectual or academic to read Ulysses, nor should you approach the text from any prescribed academic perspective, rather you should negotiate your own understanding with the aid of a good guide book and annotations. If you are a student daunted by the possibility of having to read Joyce's modern epic and potentially write essays or answer exam questions related to it, you are worrying unnecessarily. Joyce's text is littered with a combination of factual references and obscure literary allusions and motifs, an encyclopaedic scattering of the knowledge and experience contained within the mind of the author himself. There is so much secondary writing in relation to Ulysses, that formulating and supporting any essay argument is made much easier. Moreover, Joyce's elusive literary method has one massive advantage in relation to academic writing, because textual understanding and meaning is a matter of reader inference to a much greater extent than other novels, there are no wrong or right 'answers' in relation to this text. This is why negotiating your own understanding is important, as it will render your writing on the subject more individual and you should be able to make some insightful deductions of your own, rather than regurgitate what has already been mooted in the world of literary academia. You are truly free to explore the text without fear of failing to conform to preconceived literary expectations. One more point, the nature of Ulysses's difficulty means that there numerous people that butter-up their own ego's by playing the role of 'experts' doling out there own (often misinformed and ludicrous) understanding of the novel. These egoists often like the power their understanding of the novel grants them over the uninitiated, while their desire is to be perceived as superior intellectuals. These are the very people Joyce's very open text was designed to undermine, and their opinion/interpretation of the novel is no more valuable than any other reader.
You know, Hainsey-Boy, these are precisely the sort of comments I responded to with my video James Joyce's Ulysses and the Failure of Our Academic System. They are full of big words, haughty, and say and commit to absolutely nothing. Heaven forbid you open your ears to something new. "Joyce's aesthetic development is actually a theme of the earlier novel A Portrait of the Artist, but it cannot be considered a theme of Ulysses." That's idiotic and incredibly shallow, as is your assertion that the third 'entity' Stephen is a servant to is Mr. Deasy, which I responded to in my video on episode nine, but don't bother watching, stick to the classroom. What actually is the point of responding to comments such as yours', I ask myself. Those that are capable will see, will feel, what I am getting at, the vast majority, you a prime example, simply are not constituted for such things. Big of you to grant me number two, 'think for yourself,' but of course you immediately qualify that by saying one should get an annotated text and read what all the authoritative commentaries and Coles notes have to say so you can be coached beforehand on the proper way of 'thinking for yourself.' Again, classroom bred idiocy. That bit about Bloom being the older literary Joyce I've heard before too. What a crock of shit you're all passing back and forth. Could Bloom write anything? Has he written anything? He mulls such a thing over, but really isn't capable. As the question and answer episode towards the end states, Dedalus represents an artistic nature, Bloom a scientific. In short, you're an ass and you didn't get anything I was alluding to. As to that final bit about me being an 'egoist', 'expert' and 'superior intellectual,' nothing could be further from the truth. Have you read any Joseph Campbell, who's Creative Mythology refers to Joyce and Ulysses no less than fifty times? A quote from him, a savage indictment of our modern academic morass, I used in my Failure of Our Academic System, and it applies to you, especially around the words "this blight of the soul." Why haven't you read Campbell? Is it too much of a challenge? Is Campbell not considered among the 'authorities' worthy of consideration? What I'm actually trying to do with these videos, and there are a dozen or so of them now, is to indicate that there might be something else going on in the book, something actually simpler than school boys such as yourself could possibly fathom, and yet something bigger than anything we can conceive without radically altering our outlook on Life.
Omphalos: Apologies if you feel offended by my criticism, but I would just like to clarify a couple of points. Firstly, any perusal of Joyce's own critical writing clearly highlights that his own aesthetic theory is a theme of his earlier work, while he actually puts that theory into practice in the creation of Ulysses it cannot really be considered a theme of the novel. I reiterate the obvious given the context in which Stephen identifies the three masters he serves as an Irish subject: the Roman Catholic Church, the British Empire and the minority elite within Ireland represented by the Anglo-Irish headmaster Mr Deasy. This fact is not even open to debate, as Stephen's implication is clearly evident to anyone with the slightest understanding of the context of the novel's historical setting. Finally, you would have to be a genius beyond measure to tackle Ulysses without a guide book to aid comprehension, particularly in relation to Joyce's encyclopaedic references to a variety of areas, be it religion, philosophy, literature, art, music or Irish history. As I stated in my original comment, guide books help to identify Joyce's factual references and context, while interpreting meaning is, to a much greater extent than other novels, a matter of personal inference. Once again, apologies if my criticism offended you, but I stand by my comments.
You're absolutely right, Willy, none of this advice is relevant to the book AS TAUGHT IN SCHOOL, which is the reason school is utterly irrelevant to what is going on in the world about us. Stick to it though, Willy-Boy, you're safe and secure in the crowd.
Wow, you've got her all figured out there Leo. No need to go any further with it. That service to Mr. Deasy is a lock up, not even open to debate, though of course Stephen will be breaking that servitude by the end of the book when he throws over the job. Like I said, shallow and one-dimensional. As the reply to your comment by Willy Rich is, saying what's going on here at the Cafe has no relevance to the book, but really meaning 'no relevance to the book AS TAUGHT IN SCHOOL.' The funny thing being if anyone were to truly look at what is going on I'm actually the only one talking about and referencing the book. Everyone else, yourself included, talk this and that, a bunch of academic blatherspeak, and say absolutely nothing. In my synopsis of episode nine video I used this quote, directly from A Portrait, in response to the servitude thing: "The end he had been born to serve yet did not see had led him to escape by an unseen path and now it beckoned to him once more and a new adventure was about to be opened to him." Indeed I said that could be taken as a principal theme of Ulysses, because that is precisely what is taking place in the book. Stephen, as the young Joyce did, is in the process of, as he says to Mr. Deasy "awakening (or escaping) from the nightmare of history." As Joseph Campbell put it, but then who reads Campbell?, drawing a parallel between it and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain: "Next, in Ulysses (1922) and The Magic Mountain (1924), two accounts of quests through all the mixed conditions of a modern civilization for an informing principle substantial to existence…” Careful now, Leo, I'll go a step further. You won't hear this one in school. Not enough insight, not enough imagination, or courage for that matter to say anything outside of the canonically accepted. Stephen/Joyce, as I said, is relating in fictional form his awakening from the nightmare of history. And what does a fella do who has attained to that state? Well, either he goes off into his own personal nirvana or he stay behind in this world and help others in waking up as well. And what is the last book Stephen/Joyce writes? Finnegans Wake! Wake up all you Finnegans, all you people trapped in the endless round of attachment to birth and death, triumph and defeat, right and wrong. Ah, but what's the use? You don't offend me, you disappoint me, runnin with the crowd as you are. Listen to Hermann Hesse on this whole thing: “A schoolmaster would rather have a whole class of duffers than one genius, and strictly speaking he is right, for his task is not to educate unusual boys but to produce good Latinists, mathematicians, and good honest fools.” But then, what really is a genius? To me, it's a word used by lazy people who don't want to put in the work to describe those who do. And this whole Stephen Dedalus/James Joyce Ulysses thing? Here's Hesse again: “….We have the comfort of knowing that in true geniuses the wounds almost always heal, and they become people who create their masterpieces in spite of school and who later, when they are dead and the pleasant aura of remoteness hangs over them, are held up by schoolmasters to succeeding generations as exemplary and noble beings.” As I've often said, Bloomsday is for the schoolish masses, Dedalusday (a term coined here by the way) for the very few. "Um.... Sir.... Sir.... is that going to be on the exam?" "GET OUT OF HERE!"
1, Have a pint of porter by your hand 2,do NOT hold the book upside down 3, Be sitting in the Martello Tower in Sandymount 4, Ignore all the critics especially Anthony Burgess 5.do not talk or listen to any American about Ulysses cause all Americans think they are omniscient 6, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES watch ANY film that offers you six tips on Wlysses
Ah yes, Dedalus Day! A day to celebrate a rare breed, those who would strive to restore the balance we've all lost, those who would go on the Hero's Journey (that's from Joseph Campbell) and rediscover the essence of Life lost in the tangle and confusion of ongoing history (that's actually what Stephen means when he says 'history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake), our individual relationship to Life, to one another (in community), and the community as a whole's (now comprising the entire planet) essential relationship with the Life. The celebrant of Dedalus Day seeks to transcend his parochial upbringing and the conditioning involved in order to tap into the universal flow that is Life and then share that awakened wisdom with all his brothers and sisters. There is a oneness to ALL Life which the celebrant of Dedalus Day is seeking out, and it is only in the awareness of that Oneness that our collective salvation resides. Happy Dedalus Day, Kristine, Jeff
Thank you for your insights on how to approach Ulysses. Despite some trepidation that my ego might take a hit while engaging Ulysses, I'm going to give it a go. Have recently reread both Portrait of an Artist and Dubliners. Visited Dublin years ago and my daughter is currently a student at Trinity. I have 6 weeks before I return to practicing medicine after having to deal with alcohol and an inappropriate relationship that almost destroyed my career and life.
Thanks for that James. You must be proud of your daughter, and good luck with challenges life can throw in our path. I'd say forget the ego when tackling Ulysses. You're obviously a reasonably intelligent non-academically literate man and a fair question to ask is with a hundred years of high powered scholarship filling libraries behind it, why can't a single academic tell anybody in plain words that make intuitive sense what the book is about? And the answer is simple: they've all been on the wrong track! I intend on starting my next video on the subject with the Joyce quote: "With me the thought is always simple." The video will be titled "James Joyce's Ulysses, Awakening to the Wonder", and the premise is that Ulysses is less about Bloom as about James Joyce's path he took to the enlightened place he got to and wrote Ulysses and Finnegans Wake from. Stephen Dedalus says "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken," and that is precisely what he is in the process of doing. Bloom is important, as a friend to Stephen, his first and only. Oh, and one last thing. The Stephen we meet when we first open the book is not ready to encounter the woman he craves, however, the Stephen who departs Bloom's backyard at the end is, and indeed Dedalusday is June 16, 1904 because that's the day Stephen/Joyce first walked out with Norah, who would become his wife.
I am a writer. I've Been Told to expand to become a better writer I am to read. I just hate when I'm reading a classic book and just don't get it. I hope with this video I can better understand Ulysses. Thank you very much.
Hmm, yes, all the writers I've learned from over a long career of reading have been tremendously well-read themselves. Frankly, I do not see any other way of surmounting this era of supposed reason, but subtle superstition, fantasy, and (self-serving) willful ignorance. And in fact my blog and then these videos, including 'James Joyce's Ulysses: Awakening to the Wonder', 'James Joyce's Ulysses And The Failure Of Our Academic System,' and my last word on the subject, 'James Joyce's Ulysses; Wake Up You Blockheads,' is the fruit of nearly 35 years of largely solitary reading. Just finished a fun read titled 'Fantasyland, How America Went Haywire,' by Kurt Anderson. Best of luck in your journey, Phil.
Just came across your channel! This video was brilliant and highly enjoyed! Thank you! I subscribed and look forward to watching all your previous videos! Beautiful work here!
A really interesting video. Thank you. This IS relevant to developing an understanding of the book and I shall return here with interest as my reading progresses. (Who is this 'everyday reader' that we are supposed to reference as a gauge for the acceptability of commentary, or even of the book itself. It insults the notional 'average' person at the same time as it purports to be their champion. Besides, it's OK to struggle with things isn't it, to be challenged?) But I confess I find the tone of the 'debate' in these comments incredibly tiresome. One-upmanship of the crudest kind. I'm interested in Joyce and 'Ulysses', not the worst kind of smart-arse swaggering.
Well thanks Jeremy, I've largely lost interest in making these type videos anymore. Just kinda growing disillusioned with the shallowness and inanity of this whole UA-cam medium, and have retreated back into my original blog at omphaloscafe.com. You see, the sort of self-growth I'm really aiming at, as Joyce is aiming at in Ulysses as well, is not what our much vaunted educational system promotes. It's a slower, deeper, and more organic process, precisely the opposite of what we all are subjected to from kindergarten upwards. Anyway, I've said my peace on the subject in 'James Joyce's Ulysses And The Failure Of Our Academic System' and given my last video word on Joyce in 'James Joyce's Ulysses; Wake Up You Blockheads!' All the best.
I visited Dublin and the James Joyce Centre a couple of years ago now. It was the inspiration for my last viral smash of a Joyce video: James Joyce's Ulysses, Wake Up You Blockheads.
My favourite section is Cyclops as it is set in my boyhood backyard. Eventually, I looked at Homer chapter 9 eventually. I loved/am loving it so am grateful to JAJ for sending me there. What on earth has it to with his Ulysses?
Hi Brian, thanks for the comment. I particularly liked the 'What on earth...' part. Very good question. I'd amplify it though: 'what on earth does anything academia has to say about Ulysses have to do with the actual book Ulysses?' And the answer is, very little. Why? Because they plain and simply don't get that Ulysses is actually James Joyce telling the world "this is my journey, This is how I came to be the artist I am. This is my story." It is a transformative tale. His alter ego (and right into Ulysses Joyce is more autobiographical than fictional with Stephen) is undergoing the death to the everyday world of Irish and Dublin concerns that Joyce himself went through, in order to be born again as the universal artist Joyce became. Dedalus, just as Joyce did, will indeed 'wake from the nightmare of history.' My last video on the subject is 'James Joyce's Ulysses: Wake Up You Blockheads.' That, in short, is what is truly taking place in the book. However, no academic has made that journey, nor undergone such a transformation, indeed they remain veritable pillars of the status quo, which is the reason why they entirely miss the point, as well as why our entire educational system incur much scorn and derision from Joyce in both Ulysses and The Wake. Episode two spells out Joyce's attitude to our educational system. 'The futility' Stephen thinks, drumming inanities into Irish kids heads they cannot understand nor should they. Joyce will not be a 'teacher' in that sense, but one in a shaman/buddhist sense.
I LOVE : James Joyce, Emile Zola, Proust, DH Lawrence, EA Poe, HP Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Robert Silverberg, KAFKA !!!! , Tom Wolfe, all the Russian Authors, William Blake, and so many, many more. BUt NOT Ernest Hemingway.
Ah yes, books, books, books. But referring to books, what could the young James Joyce be meaning when he has his alter ego Stephen in Ulysses think "coffined words?" One of the biggest reasons I contend that almost no one grasps what is actually taking place in the book is the fact that in Stephen Dedalus Joyce is really telling the world how he became the artist that he did. And when I say Artist I put him on a much profounder level than most of the so-called 'artists' of today. I believe that with this notion that Joyce is in reality sharing his own development, his own death and resurrection (just like Proust was in his mighty tome) into fully fledged Shaman/Buddha/Genuine Artist every single word and thought Stephen utters is absolutely crucial to understanding both what is going on in the novel but more importantly what we today are struggling to come to grips with. "Coffined words" are the dead remains of what once lived, just like seashells on a seashore. Unless we ourselves succeed in plumbing to the depths of life's essence and divine mystery within ourselves those words and those books remain up on a pedestal or shelf, or in the sterile confines of academia, to be 'tackled' by educated blowhards and parroted back for grades. (Haines the academic used that term 'tackled' when referring to his conversation with Stephen in the opening chapter. He was utterly incapable of grasping on an experiential level what the young Joyce was trying to say.) Good luck with all the books, books and more books, Linda.
I want to just batter on and get right into Ulysses, but I still feel like I need to read The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Dubliners, Portrait of an Artist and maybe even some Dante just to get a base understanding of some of the most obvious references in the book. Not sure if you’ve heard of Frank Delaney’s podcasts on his channel ‘Re:Joyce’. It’s brilliant that I can follow him and any other guide, but I would rather read it alone with no outside interference and understand it on my own, even though I know this is probably not possible.
Ahh, yes, that’s how they get you! And that, too, is the sickness of our age. Don’t go it alone! Don’t follow your own hunches, the little voice inside yourself. Follow the guides, teachers and professors. Sit in that classroom! Well, Herr Klamm, thankfully a few of your countrymen didn’t follow the guides and did go it alone. Goethe of course, who’s ‘Apprenticeship of a Young Something-or-Other’ is referenced in Ulysses in regards to Stephen/the young James Joyce. Goethe’s work was loosely biographical, as Ulysses is! Thomas Mann recounts the same sort of individual journey in many of his works, as does Hermann Hesse. Nietzsche too took that solitary path, but the isolation his day proved too arduous and he went insane; while Spengler just turned dour. This video was an early work. Had I to do it over I would say simply: Stephen Dedalus IS the young James Joyce and in the book Joyce is saying “Folks, ignore the academics, THIS is how I got to the place from which I wrote Ulysses and Finnegans Wake!” Everyone faced with Ulysses comes to that fork in the road. Should they take the extremely well trodden path, follow the guides, read the primers, seek out the so called ‘authorities’, or should they hack their way into that dark and overgrown and obviously unused opening, which might not even be an opening? Has their education up to that point in their lives inclined them towards a certain well worn path? Do they even have a choice anymore? Yes, I would say, we still do have a choice. I know which path most people take, and I know which path I took. The one I took has led me here to the Cafe.
The Omphalos Cafe I’m actually Scottish: Herr Klamm is my online name taken from a Kafka book. I studied English literature at university, so going by your comment you must think I’m some kind of fool for starting off down that well-trodden path as you call it. To give you an update anyway, I decided to just start with Joyce. I read Dubliners to give me a feel for the man (it was decent overall, but The Dead was fantastic) and I am now two thirds through Portrait. I had a very Catholic upbringing-though not quite Jesuit level-and I was very much a daydreamer like Dedalus/Joyce, fascinated with the world around me, immersed in my sensory perceptions. I also feel like I fell into the same mind prison that Stephen does, and became detached and introverted. Unlike Stephen, I don’t think I’ve made a full recovery, despite turning my back on my religion at around 15 years of age. I’m getting a lot from Portrait despite not being familiar with a lot of the references. My problem, though, is my own curiosity. When it come up against something that I don’t quite understand, I will google that reference to get as much knowledge and understanding I possibly can from it. When I come across song lyrics Joyce has mentioned, I listen to the song on UA-cam. It constantly disrupts the my flow but I can’t help it. I don’t see the point in reading words and sentences I cannot comprehend. I also find it quite hard to follow Stephen’s stream of consciousness - it can actually be quite dizzying, leaving me feeling a bit nauseous. This is also very similar to my own way of thinking - scattered and never ending; repetitive, inconclusive, futile. I’m going to finish it and jump into Ulysses in the next few days. I’m a bit worried that I have built my expectations up far too much for this book. Something about it always called to me. I’ve always known I need to read it, I just don’t know why it’s always drawn me toward it.
Well HK, there’s a lot going on in your comment, a lot that runs deep into what I might call the challenge of our age. So I’ll dive in saying it is not learning I am critical of but our educational institutions, ‘institution’ being a crucial word here. In a response to another comment I wrote that Joyce strikes right to the heart of the matter precisely in Ulysses with his portrayals of Haines and Prof. McHugh. Haines studies literature but he refuses or ignores the disregarded psychic source of his terror of panthers in the night, most probably related to repressed sexuality. Therefore he studied the outside world without experiencing his inner world and hence participating from an integrated perspective. But that is nothing less than the prime condition of Western Mankind, and in my opinion a driving force for Western Man’s much vaunted intellectual ‘enlightenment.’ Reason has forged ahead while the psycho-spiritual foundation was never fully laid and the weakness in it have never truly been acknowledged. By the way, between reading A Portrait and Ulysses, why not read a small volume called ‘Stephen Hero?’ The timeline of Joyce’s autobiography overlaps A Portrait and precedes Ulysses by about a year or two at most. Seminal months in Joyce’s development which ‘literature’ seems to ignore completely. And while reading it ask ‘why was this unpublishable and A Portrait, after endless compromises, was?’ So continuing: a religion is a psycho-spiritual combination of poetic mythic elements teaching an inner tale to a people, drawing them into membership and identity with the group and giving them a sort of cosmological viewpoint or orientation with the world. Judaism is a powerful and highly closed example of such a religious system. Christianity, an offshoot of Judaism, is slightly more open but still reserves the right to ‘ex-communicate’ those who would deny its all-encompassing validity. But what if one of those systems no longer serves the deep inner needs of its members? What if the world has changed and our knowledge of it too has left the quaint old tales comprising the old system no longer ‘feeling’ authentic to our inner lives any more? Where are we to turn then? That is really the question addressed with a great many works over the last hundred to two hundred years, including Joyce’s work. But here’s another thing, Herr MacKlam, what if a people never quite had the chance to fully realize and ‘systematize’ their deepest psycho-spiritual truths before another was ruthlessly imposed upon them by a more technologically (including literate) advanced peoples? As an example I might offer our North American First Nations Peoples dragged off their lands and sent to Christian schools. How would an eventual quest for deepest inner meaning look for such a psycho-spiritually displaced peoples? Big questions. But that is your story too as well as mine. Northern Europe’s nascent psycho-spiritual religion was almost totally stamped out by it’s leader’s adoption of Christianity, a system with it’s roots not in Northern Europe but in the dying classical world of Ancient Rome and beyond that to the desert of the Eastern Mediterranean. And so we today are left leaving a religious ‘system’ behind which if truth were told was never truly our own and never truly met the needs of our Northern willful world! Wow, ponder that, because that is us!
The Omphalos Cafe Herr MacKlam, haha! Good one. You can call me Mark if you want. Appreciate your response. You make some interesting points I had never deeply pondered before, particularly with the point that relates to your video with the clip from the film Gladiator - when reading about Columbus, Cortez etc. i always, regretfully, associated myself as one of the Europeans. I had never considered that my true bloodline was not of those European conquerors but of some lost tribe. Your point about lost spiritual meaning is something, I think, worth pondering. The thought itself is a bit depressing - I’d like to imagine that we can recover from any kind of loss of a spiritual past. I’m almost finished with Portrait. It started to get a bit dense for me when Stephen begins to discuss aesthetics and Aquinas/Plato. I’m having to slow down a lot and concentrate to follow him. I would read Stephen Hero but I am honestly eager to jump into Ulysses after this. I don’t want to wait any longer.
Well, hate to say it, but I can because with a last name like Smith I too am of Scottish or English derivation, but we are the Conquistadores! We did that and continue to do that across the globe. However, and this is what is not quite understood, we were also a thousand years earlier those rude ‘barbarians’ the Romans fought at the outset of ‘Gladiator.’ They won that battle, but we would win the war and reshape the map first of Europe and now of the world. And this is also where it gets interesting, because having won the political and military war (and those indomitable Scots were never conquered) we submitted to a more advanced religious teaching rather than stick with our own less developed one. Hence the Arthurian Grail King suffering from a ‘dolorous’ wound through the genitals by a lance that pierced the side of Christ. Therein is the schism in the Western Soul! Having gained the right to political self-determination from that dying and corrupt Roman world we surrendered to its consolatory religious system, namely Roman Catholic Christianity. In Protestantism the warrior soul of the West breaks free from submission to the Pope, but having none of its own nascent oral tradition left it falls back upon the warrior ways of those Old Testament early Jews. Big stuff, but truly foundational to our modern seeking soul. And by the way, you can also write me at my blog’s (Omphaloscafe.com) address: Omphaloscafe@gmail.com. Gotta drive my truck.
He doesn’t explicitly state that it is a work designed to deliver the reader to the signifier unhinged from a discourse...thus a liberation from the designs of power!!!
The Omphalos Cafe I was seriously drunk when I wrote that. I was also seriously enjoying myself as well. That liberation from power stuff was nothing more than idiotic sporting. The signifier stuff however is another way of saying something of what you yourself claimed. It was an affirmation. I like that neither one of us understood each other...and this time around I’m not drunk!
Back from the pub where I was enjoying a few cold ones. I'll admit my response was a little short, mostly because I had just responded to yet another over intellectualized pile of bilge by Leopold down below. However, being drunk while writing and what's more important, seriously enjoying yourself, earns extra points in my books. Thanks for that and all the best.
The comment below may be right to criticise you for making gaudy promises. It is one of the most analysed literatary texts in existence. But good insights nonethless. Especially about not having to read Dante and Homer beforehand. Ulysses isn't like Faust in that respect.
Gaudy promises? Me? You're talking literary analyses and I'm talking personal growth in this troubled modern world we find ourselves trying to navigate. Two completely different things, and probably mutually incompatible.
Bloom himself, in the book, talking to Stephen in the cabman's shelter (episode 16?) says "Actually, I'm not really a Jew." Very important to understanding the true depth of Ulysses. Stephen is no longer Roman Catholic, Bloom is no longer Jewish, and Molly (modelled after Joyce's wife Norah) never was anything at all (except a devotee of Life!). All three are beyond 'religion', but beyond organized religion what is there? You could even say what is there for us today, having largely gone beyond the religions bequeathed to us from the past (which Stephen is trying to awaken from.) That is what the book is really about: what there is beyond, what there is to wake up to, and not coincidentally what Stephen is waking up to following the breakdown of the brothel episode. And what does Stephen/Joyce title his last book? Finnegans Wake! Wake up to something new folks, wake up to all of Life!
@@theomphaloscafe3501 я буду пропагандировать Вашу версию, что Молли не изменяла. Раскольников у Достоевского не убивал ростовщицу, но взял вину на себя как юродивый.
@@anatolyyurkin6635 Molly only 'cheated' in a conventional sense, one based on the morality of the time and upheld by the religion of the age. But Stephen, Bloom, and especially Molly have gone beyond the religious morale of the age. Think of it, Bloom has not made love to Molly for nearly 10 years due to setbacks and pressures in his own life. Molly is 33 years old and has remained 'faithful' to him for ten years. Is she 'cheating' when she, the most living of all the characters in the book, finally takes a lover, or is she being true to Life? Bloom has been the typical modern man who has lost his purpose and in a sense manhood in life, undermined by many things. However, in meeting Stephen (and were you aware that Stephen though being totally cut off from the world of Dublin, utterly severed from any vital connection to the people and their ways, actually dreams of meeting Bloom the night before the action of the book takes place?) Bloom retrieves a sense of purpose and begins to take control of things again in his life and in a way retrieves his manhood. I love the fact that when we first meet him he is making breakfast for Molly in bed, back in the day a reversal of male-female roles; and then read the first line of Molly's amazing chapter 18: she's outraged because Bloom has told her he wants his breakfast in bed when he wakes! That fact, which so upsets Molly at first, sets in motion her own reappraisal of things and brings home to her a sense that Bloom as a man is back and there might just possibly be a future again with him.
@@anatolyyurkin6635 I don't agree that Joyce 'loves to confuse.' I believe people don't truly understand what the book is about and therefore miss what is taking place and the profound import of it. Boylan is a player, boastful and vain, like so many people these days. For want of anyone else to make love to her Molly chooses him, but aside from the fact that she was well shtumped it was an unsatisfying experience.
I'm sorry, but I don't care a damn for your 'taste,' Sam. Any thoughts on Joyce? Have you read anything by him and has that triggered any reflections, any associations, any connections with experiences of your own or other books you might have read? I notice you have no videos of your own on the subject, or any subject whatsoever. Why is that, Sam? The reason, I believe, is that leaving comments such as this is easy, requires nothing of yourself, and adds nothing whatsoever to the conversation at hand. UA-cam is filled with stuff like it. It's part of the age we live in, one of noise and distraction. If you're another Christian who has stumbled upon this quiet place, ponder the deep meaning of Babel, noise, hubbub and confusion. Write back when you've posted your first video, Sam, and I'll have a look. Otherwise, don't bother leaving your foolish comments. Several times in my videos I've stated these videos aren't for everyone, this place is not for everyone. I was thinking of people like you when I said that.
Hey, his comment wasn't the usual youtube rage. It was critical but specific. I happen to agree that your mode of speaking overshadowed Joyce a bit. If you don't want to adapt to Sam's input because you'd prefer the style of videos to stay exactly as originally thought up, that's fine. However, there's no need to demonize Sam.
Hey, you got anything to say on the subject matter of the video, or is it all this new age 'I've got an opinion and I'm entitled to it no matter how little experience I have of life or reflection I've put into whatever the teacher told me I have to read?' "Critical but specific?" Specific about what, may I ask? What do you have to say about Joyce, Case? Have any thoughts on the subject? Or is it the old Homer parallel business the professor in front of the room droned on about? Or is Joyce beyond you? have you read any Joseph Campbell, anything at all actually that relates to our life right here and right now, as Joyce actually does. Too much me? There has to be more me, and more you too if you ever get around to actually formulating a thought of your own on the subject besides "you're so mean" and "that's not fair!" Life moves on, and life is really what I'm pointing at with this stuff. Taking Joyce off his pedestal and back where he belongs, down in the street and walking the fields with you and me and anyone else who's willing and able enough to truly go it on their own. "Art... is the very central expression of life. An artist is not a fellow who dangles a mechanical heaven before the public. The priest does that. The artist affirms out of the fulness of his own life, he creates..." Thus saith Stephen Dedalus in Stephen Hero, but of course who has read that? It's not part of the cannon, not taught in school. This place isn't for everyone, Case. I've been honest and open about that. It's not for the spoonfed, not for those who've sat in a classroom in order to get the credits and the degree. It's for those beyond that, out the other side and still curious. I'm talking a curiosity like hunger. More and more I realize that's not the age we live in now, and I'm alright with that. But here at the Cafe at any rate that sort of ethos still applies. It's like a Zen master smacking an obtuse would be student with his staff. He's saying, with action more than words, "wake up you silly little fool, listen deeply and there might be something beneath the surface worth hearing, if you're up to it that is."
Joyce looks throughout this work at life and makes very few judgements; he is taking life as it is, regardless of when Bloom is looking at Gertie or the Citizen is yelling at Bloom or what have you, very little has opinion or a criticism of what is transpiring. Your somewhat defensive comment against a person who was merely giving his opinion of your presentation neither encourages discussion nor demonstrates a willingness for dialogue. I have disliked this video for that reason. There can be little peace without free speech and a desire to listen to others.
"How win a woman's heart" these type of stereo typing is not smart or valuable , at least not anymore! Man and woman are not things , we can not categorise them!!!!
As I've said before, this stuff is not for everyone, Nancy. People have agendas, ideas and ideals. Those people generally have little to say about the subject of the videos or blogs, they merely object to something, usually based on some idealistic conception of how things aught to be. The worst of those are the trolls, who I ask to at the very least explain or enlighten me a little more, perhaps even with examples from the books, rather than simply object to a word or two they find offensive. Usually the reply is more invective, and no explanations or elaborations. They get deleted as fools. Anyway, believe it or not, Nancy, here at the Omphalos Cafe things are perfect precisely the way they are. That's Life. And all the schooling and theorizing and wishing isn't going to change things one jot. The principal thing is to celebrate it, revere it, and jump into it just the way it is with both feet. That is the lesson both Bloom and Dedalus are on the road to discovering; that is the lesson that Molly embodies. When I read lines like the one's you've left I am immediately reminded of Joyce's unpublished fragment 'Stephen Hero,' and Emma, the full bodied but idealistic nationalist Irish lass who captivated Stephen for a time. Her thinking is hard, logical, and chaste, blind to the realities and potentials of life and death to the poetic spirit. Stay in school.
@@theomphaloscafe3501 Wow. I really enjoyed your video, but this seems like a deliberately obtuse (and dismissive) response to a valid criticism. Nancy may not have explained herself in paragraph form, but she makes a good point. Your idea that the novel explores "how a man earns the love of a good woman" and "what key he need posses in order to be worthy of that love" overlooks some critical ideas. First, how do you define a "good" woman? From the way you frame your thinking about Molly's affair (not unfaithfulness) with Boylan, you seem to understand that many readers would not consider Molly to be "good" based on her sexual behaviour (I am not one of those readers, to be clear). To me, describing Molly (or ANY woman in the story) as "a good woman" is as simplistic as it would be to describe Bloom as "a good man." He is a complex human with foibles and compassion, shortcomings and endearing qualities, and he sets in motion many things over the course of his day, which have both negative and positive consequences for himself and others. Molly is the same. Second, the notion of "earning" love is disingenuous. Humans make connections. They love irrationally. They have various natural levels and layers of compatibility. If you told me you "earned" your best friend through certain behaviours, I would find that creepy and I would doubt the foundation of your friendship. Romantic relationships are no different. Molly herself rejects the idea that she was ever "earned" when she is remembering Bloom's proposal: "he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another." Bloom had done nothing to set himself apart from other suitors, or to "earn" her affirmative answer. She married him because they were happy together in that moment. They made a connection, and it made them both happy, and that was enough. She also describes the feelings of the many women like her, "chained up" at home while their husbands roam around town at all hours getting up to God knows what. She understands the fundamental injustice of being treated like just another belonging in a man's home that he has bought or earned, and is sleeping with Boylan as a way of rejecting that view of herself. Third, your idea that there is a "key" to being worthy of a woman's love is based on the false assumption that women fall in love with men because men "deserve" it. There is no "key" to being worthy of love. Many people ARE loved despite being what you or I might consider UNworthy. Daedalus, Bloom, and Molly are all terribly lonely people, and it's not because they are not worthy of love. They have all lost the connections they once had (Stephen to his mother (patched with hollow friendships to people like Mulligan), and Bloom and Molly to each other through their son), and are at a loss to establish new ones. Fourth, you link the "Key" to being worthy of love to the "essence of manhood," implying that a real man, by definition, is worthy of a good woman's love. Does a man need a woman in order to be a man? If so, does that mean a woman needs a man in order to be a woman? These ideas are so subjective as to be meaningless. Perhaps the "key" that is referenced in the text so many times is not the key to worthiness of love, but instead the key to human connection. To begin to fight the creeping loneliness by reaching out to the people in our lives and striking the spark that can kindle the hearth fires of companionship. Perhaps the "key" that Bloom forgot at home, and that Stephen gave away, is the key to finding happiness for themselves by extending compassion and seeing to the happiness of others. It is your phrasing I disagree with more than your point, but I do wish you would explain what you mean more specifically, and certainly when responding to criticism. Nancy didn't deserve the response you gave her. If Nancy's lack of elaboration made you dismiss her as a troll, I hope the elaboration of her point that I have provided will prompt you to at least engage with the substance of this criticism, rather than simply the tone.
Wow, what a shiteload of words, Slovenly, most of which I've responded to already with my videos 'James Joyce's Ulysses and the Failure of Our Academic System' and my latest, 'Dedalusday 2019.' Now, in the classroom where they come from this might pass as 'critical thinking' or 'analysis,' but here at the Omphalos Cafe they're nothing more than unreadable hogwash. Total bilge. Not worth responding to, really. However, as in my Dedalusday video, I have a quote from a book for you. But before I get to the quote, did Nancy put you up to this? Is she still smarting from the well-deserved kick in the pants I gave her? Write to her and tell her to grow up and get over it. Now the quote. It's from a book called 'Ulysses,' by a guy named James Joyce. It's from episode ten. Stephen Dedalus, one of the trio of heroes in the work is strolling the streets of Dublin and perusing a book cart. "...[W]hat is this? Eighth and Ninth book of Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this." Waaa!? Et tu, James Joyce? Et tu? What could Joyce be getting at here, Slovenly, and why would Stephen wryly think to himself, "For me this?" Maybe you and Nancy can get together and deconstruct that one. Sounds like there might even be the ingredients for a critical connection there. But please, discuss it amongst yourselves. Not here.
@@theomphaloscafe3501 Yes, I specifically chose a shiteload of words, because I can see how much you love to criticize people for not explaining themselves in detail. In fact, I am NOT an acquaintance of Nancy's, but rather a bookworm who just finished this amazing, life-changing book you might have heard of. It's a book called 'Ulysses' by a guy named James Joyce (see how pointlessly condescending that is? Do you honestly believe my problem is that I haven't read the book?). I decided to take a spin around the internet to see what others thought of this amazing book, and stumbled across your videos. I watched a couple, thought, "This guy has some interesting ideas! I'd like to hear more!" and then I looked in the comment section and saw what a patronizing jerk you are to anyone who criticizes you. I saw the pointlessly cruel comment you left for Nancy and thought, "Hey, it's 2019, and no one should think it is ok to respond to a woman's valid criticism about the way SHE is thought of, and the sexism that is a part of HER experience, by refusing to engage with the substance of her point and dismissing her as uneducated. You can believe, or not, that more than one person thinks you are an arrogant bully - it's ok to call me Nancy's stooge if it makes you feel better; I know you have your fragile masculinity to protect. In fact, my analysis was not of the book, really, but of YOUR STATEMENT using wording that you chose. But if my ideas are from the classroom, then you are really in trouble, because I HAVE a classroom wherein I teach 9-year-olds how to read. If my ideas are too advanced for you, then truly, you are the one that needs to "stay in school." (Of course, since you've told me to get OUT of the classroom, I really wonder what level of education you consider acceptable to validate an opinion). You could have acknowledged that I had a point, as the statement stood, and politely directed me to your follow-up videos for context that would explain what you meant, and thereby salvaged my opinion of you. Instead you chose to berate me for not watching ALL your videos, and respond to my points by taking a sexist idea right out of the book ("How to win a woman's love") and presenting it at face value. And since you asked, there is a lot to be unpacked in Stephen's perusal of that book. Was his thought a foolish/juvenile acceptance of the premise of the book? Did he think a woman would bring him the happiness he sought because that is what he'd been told? Was it a "wry" recollection of the people during his day who had asked him about marriage? Did he see that book as a possible cure for his loneliness? The problem with taking stream-of-consciousness narration at face value is that it is all tangled up in the worries/hopes/beliefs/neuroses of the character, and not necessarily an objective statement. I am sorry you find my hogwash unworthy of response. If I had any further interest in being condescended to, I'm sure I would see that as a terrible blow.
More words, words, words. But alright, Slovenly, I'll try another tack. People come to the Omphalos Cafe, and I've been doing a blog for nearly ten years I'd guess, with ideas, mostly learned in the classroom, though in reality the acquiring of ideas starts at a very early age. Similarly, they come to James Joyce with a great many ideas, many of which you can get an introduction to by the taking in of what is offered across the net. Nancy, as most other people, including you, came here with ideas. Two of which might be distilled to 'equality' and a perceived prevalence of 'sexism.' Let me begin with the first: equality. Honestly, open your eyes and look out upon the world and give me one instance of 'equality.' Just one. Because the reality, and I'm talking the absolute reality here, is that there is nothing equal under the sun. It is a nice idea, but it has no basis in reality. Are you and I 'equal?' Now this is not a value judgement here. This is not 'I'm better and you're worse,' it is just reality. I might be bigger, I might be smaller, I'm probably older, and as to our brain's retentive capacity, who knows and who really cares?There is character and the fire of Life and we have the ability to harness these, but they are never equal. Equality is an idea people bring here and I'm not interested in ideas, Slovenly, I'm interested in Life. Hence my exhortation to 'grow up.' That is, get past the reliance and hard shield of ideas society has foisted upon you and take a good hard look at the world as it is, not as we've been taught it 'should' or 'could' or 'will one day' be. Next: 'sexism.' Sex is everywhere. It is the great dynamic of life. And I'm not talking about a crude act here, I'm talking about the great intertwined dance of Life. Which is actually the great realization that Joyce is giving artistic form to in Ulysses. Are you really trying to tell me that men and women are 'equal?' And again, there is no value judgement in that question. But to assert that men and women in fact are 'equal' is to betray a foolish young naiveté, an immaturity, or perhaps a deep and unconscious rejection of Life. Stephen meets Bloom and beyond awakening to compassion towards another, he as an artist is coming into contact with a man who in this case was initially out of living dynamic relation with woman but who will in the course of the day come back into that dynamic state of dance, of tension and mutual attraction/repulsion, whatever you might call it. I'm talking the great Yin Yang of Life. And you know what? Bloom and Molly end their day in the Yin Yang position in bed too! Again, I'm not talking ideas here, Slovenly. I'm talking, as Elie Faure put it in the title of a book focusing on the stupendous challenge of the genuine artist: 'The Dance Over Fire and Water.' Arrogance? Not really. Just don't bring you're old and tired out ideas here. They have nothing to do with what's going on. They have nothing to do with Life, and as I've repeatedly said: Life is ALL there is. As my title of the Dedalusday video continued: there is no such thing as thinking outside the box, because thinking IS the box! That's enough for now. I honestly don't care what other people think, Slovenly. Our ideas get in the way of a genuine connection and experience of Life. All the great artists have come to know that and strive to communicate it, but time and time again people bring their ideas to bare and utterly miss the point as a result. We live in the age of idea, while reality seems to threaten to swamp us from every direction. The chasm between idea and reality is widening, but to me reality is just biding its time. Unless something changes, unless our ideas shift, reality will probably give us all a good kick in the pants one day. But actually, that's ok by me, being reality too. That's what I meant when I responded to Nancy with things are actually perfect just as they are, right now, today. The Kingdom of Heaven is right here around you and you don't even know it. This is Life, right here and now. I say celebrate it, which is the aim of the Cafe at heart. You are it, Slovenly. Not your ideas, not what you've been taught, but you. Not the idea or ideal you cling to of yourself, not the static image your brain has stored away based on reflections in mirrors. Not your perceived self-worth, status, position or job in society. You, freed from all those categories. That's Bloom and Stephen in Ulysses, beyond categories, undefinable. In flow. Have a nice day, Slovenly. Peace, in the dance.....
This is astoundingly wrong, starting with the guy's assertion that he has a unique reading of Ulysses ("...so many experts weighing in on the subject...what could I possibly add to the discussion?.... When I pick up and read Ulysses it's as if I'm reading an entirely different book than everyone else has in their hands...") The guy doesn't even get "principle" and "principal" right in his first of six tips. Ugh. I'm done.
Heya Done Man, Astoundingly wrong? Please elaborate! I clicked on your name and came up with.... nothing. Have you read the book? Once, twice, just a skim? Did you sit in a classroom and pick up a few key words, like Homer's Odyssey and 'interior monologue' and build what little notion you have of Joyce around that? The internet is rife with these sorts of comments, Kevin. I get it, they're easy. Fire of a few quick derogatory lines and finish with the a devastating 'I'm done!' But what really have you read, or experienced for that matter? What can you bring to the discussion, any discussion? Have you read Stephen Hero and A Portrait, Exiles? All of Ulysses? Any of the Wake? Have you read Campbell's A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake? What about a biography of Joyce? Ellmann? Bowker? Are you aware that Campbell has another book out entirely on Joyce titled Mythic Worlds, Modern Words? Or do you go through life firing scorn on others, spewing bile everywhere from the comfort of your mommy's basement? You're up champ, tell me where I'm wrong. Educate me. I'm open to it.
Thank you for this video, I've studied Dubliners and high school and just decided to tackle Ulysses in english even though it's my second language. I really hope I'll manage to read it and appreciate it, it is a very big challenge !
Thanks for the comment Manon. You've a Quebec sounding name, I say that because I grew up in Montreal.
The point I'm always trying to make with regards to Joyce and Ulysses is that it's actually easier and yet much deeper than most people would have you think.
All it is is the simple story of the twenty two or three year old James Joyce's awakening to Life's fullest and deepest wonder in this world we, you and I and everyone else, inhabit today. That's why the video that follow's this one is titled James Joyce's Ulysses, Awakening to the Wonder.
But now I have a few more planned, simple synoptic overviews of what's really going on beneath the fancy and stylish wordplay of each episode. Mainly because with all the verbose reviews available who is recounting in plain and simple English what's actually taking place, never mind all the learned shite that gets in the way.
Anyway, thanks again and best of luck.
I'm French actually, so that make sense that you'd hear my name in Montreal I guess ! ;) I just finished the first episode, it was a bit challenging, I did not get many things, but it was a pleasant read, especially because I read it out loud and it made a huge difference, and also made me appreciate the poetic aspect of Joyce's writing. So many rhymes !
Ah, chapter one. Three young men on the threshold of fully fledged adulthood. Buck the young man of science, medical student, witty, brash, mocking, Haines the young man of letters, more serious and one day no doubt a professor of English literature, and Dedalus/Joyce, neither young man of science nor of letters... the young shaman/artist/Buddha-to-be and one day writer of such masterpieces as Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
Just for your information Ms. Vercouter (which didn't sound Quebecois, as there are actually a fairly limited range of last names due to historic circumstances), I've a Free Books App on my iPhone with which I've downloaded a free Librevox audiobook version of the book. So far the first episode is the worst reading of it.
It was inevitable that Ulysses would produce internet 'experts'.
The best part of your comments are- just read it. I started down the road to Ulysees while visiting William and Marys bookstore with my parents on vacation when I was 14 or 15. Long before going off to university, I bought the book and my parents said it was okay to read since it was literature. Once I started in 1965 or 1966 till today I have read this book a number of times, visited Dublin 1/2 dozen times, taken both of my sons there and still find something new each time I pick it up. Once you get into it you realize you may need to pick up another copy or two and bookBut most important just read it.
Have studied this favorite book of mine for decades. Of all the criticism etc., you simply have to read two books by Joyce biographer Richard Ellmann: "James Joyce," the bio; and, "Ulysses on the Liffey," a very small but razor-accurate analysis of Joyce's goals and intentions and (yes) even his ethical/moral concerns in the book. Those will save you worlds of confusion and add worlds of delight to reading "Ulysses," I promise!
The advice I give people who are thinking about reading it is to start at chapter 4, and come back to the first 3 chapters later on. My favorite chapters are the Night town and the catechism chapters (I never remember their titles).
Tip # 2 is all I needed to hear.....I will get back to you when I have finished reading the WHOLE of it ....I have given up a number of times in the past...I thought some commentary might help...but....Thanks for the tip....sounds like good advice to me!
It's not easy, at first glance. Less because of all the capital 'L' literature people would have you believe than Stephen and Bloom's thoughts swirl, as our's do through the course of a day, back and forth, inside and out. Try my plainspoken synopsis of episodes one through five, they're meant to be a solid launching pad for the simple and yet profound stuff that's really going on in the book.
All the best. And an audiobook version, I got mine off of iBooks, very well read, is easier to listen to than reading for the most part. That is, reading's fantastic, but if you drift or lose focus for a page you miss or skip the slow accumulation of thought and impression.
Thanks for the comment.
No, Joyce was deliberately opaque and obscure. He wanted "the professors" to be parsing Ulysses forever. (He succeeded.)
Modernism had that “elitist” slant though. TS Eliot would tell people who didn’t understand The Wasteland that it was written for a more cultured readership.
And Damn, here's another tip I wish I included in the video, at the core of what I'm trying to get across. It's from Joseph Campbell's Creative Mythology (pg. 39). It goes:
“Next, in Ulysses (1922) and The Magic Mountain (1924), two accounts of quests through all the mixed conditions of a modern civilization for an informing principle substantial to existence…”
Woa, "quests through all the mixed conditions of a modern civilization for an informing principle substantial to existence...?"
Sounds pretty serious.
By the way, Omphalos, you may want to consider both Stephen and Bloom as Joyce--since both characters are built out of Joyce's own memories. Molly, if I understand that part correctly, is based on Joyce's interview with several women--most importantly Nora, of course...still, if you read the episode closely, you will see eventually that Molly is also Joyce and built--which is to say, re-projected from his own memories.
Nick Williamson - absolutely right! One and the same.
Hello....I enjoyed very much your video and your tips on Ulysses. I m half the way through the book, having read Dubliners and Portrait before... also halted Ulysses in order to re read and dive deeply into Hamlet. I fully agree that reading Homer and the schema is not a pre-requisite for Ulysses and that everything is about Dedalus as Joyce's alter ego. Looking forward to more videos. Alex from Mar del Plata.... Argentina. Your best tip: just keep reading..
Hi Alex, I appreciate the comment. Haven't made a video in a couple of years now but contemplating getting back at it. My summary of the book is in my video James Joyce's Ulysses: Wake Up You Blockheads. Also there's James Joyce's Ulysses And The Failure Of Our Academic System. Not to mention a sort of chapter to chapter summary up to about nine or ten when I tired of the exercise.
As far as Hamlet is concerned, I personally wouldn't bother.
The real key to why no one understands the book is in the FACT that Joyce (as Dedalus) is telling the world exactly how he underwent a death to the modern world of Dublin and an artistic rebirth or awakening as the man of the world, under the (Buddhistic) 'heaven tree of stars' he writes of in episode 17, just as foreshadowed in the first chapters of A Portrait with his locating himself in the present and the universe. I am always reminded of Henry Miller's retelling of his own artistic death and resurrection in his Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy. Other parallels are Mann's Magic Mountain Odyssey through the land of the dead and Proust's death to the world and artistic birth in his cork lined room recapturing the significance of all that time lost.
Regards, Jeff
Ompholou cafe was analyses of plot,characters& their interplay with one another was simply & understandable.Will up" Ulysses " to buy the next I go to market.
Thanks for this video. I have decided to tackle Ulysses this year and I found this video to be very helpful.
I appreciate the comment Radiant. Good luck and have fun with it. It's birth, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and mature adulthood, senescence and death. All packed in tightly, richly. Dammit, hopefully my next video on the subject will be out by the end of the week.
All the best.
all your videos are refreshing saunas of sound. thank you for yourservice
Do you think it's the best to start off with some of Joyce's earlier works before you tackle Ulysses or does it not really matter?
That's a simple enough question, Eli, and the answer is pretty simple too, but it depends on you.
Why do you feel compelled to 'tackle' Ulysses? Is it a school project, or do you feel a desire to appear 'literate' in front of others? Have you done some homework and now feel ready for the challenge everyone claims the book is? And what else have you read up to this point in your life, and more importantly, why did you read them?
I ask these questions because for the vast vast majority of people the answer is of course yes, read Dubliners and then A Portrait, and then if you're really serious you can look into Homer, naturally, and then Hamlet amongst a slew of others referenced in Ulysses. And of course you can watch every video on UA-cam, they all more or less say the exact same thing (I go over this in my video 'James Joyce's Ulysses And The Failure Of Our Academic System.') It's a great way to fit in with the faculty club crowd patting each other on the backs while quaffing a beer on Bloomsday, June 16th.
However, if you feel slightly maladapted in this world of our's and deep down inside there's a profound craving for something more, a vague sense that all is not as it should be and the things your parents and society have taught you as you've grown into young adulthood simply don't jive with either your inner being nor the outer world and you crave in your heart a new relationship with yourself and the world about, that route probably won't satisfy you, in fact you'll end up wondering 'what was the point' after the 644 page ordeal, just as I did.
This latter road, an arduous journey of discovery, not unlike that undertaken in The Razor's Edge, Miller's RosiCrucifixion Trilogy, the works of Hesse and Mann, Proust and many more, as summarized in Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces, is a longer voyage and it pretty much guarantees a break from the school route and conventionality, but it is well worth it and you might even end up with something worthwhile to share with others when you're done.
The choice, as they say, is your's, and like I've said: 'Bloomsday is for the masses, Dedalusday for the few.'
Good luck.
As to your contention that the third one, who wants Stephen for odd jobs, is "life," I have a different opinion. Recall as you note (10:31 on) that in Portrait, Stephen complains of three nets that "hold [the Irish soul] back from flight" (C. Anderson, Viking, p. 203): "nationality, language, religion." Then, compare the three constraints from Ulysses: "The imperial British state," "the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church," and a third "who wants me for odd jobs" (1.641). Firstly, if we "professors" go digging though the Ellmann biography, we will learn that young James of this age is being offered small writing jobs for the local papers (later Crawford will ask him to write something with bite, Episode Seven) and that Yeats and others had urged him to ply his talent on the then new Irish Theatre featuring works--originally only in Irish, then mostly in Irish. Now, if we don't want to play "professor," and just go with the text, this side reference might seem obscure; that is, until we examine the parallel with Episode Two, where (as you note) Stephen informs the Tory Deasy that he is trying to escape history...also, that he fears "those big words...which make us so unhappy" (2.264), "generosity" and "justice," i.e., the economic generosity of the British state (hence all the references to the money as "crowns" and "sovereigns") and the justice of the Catholic Church (hence all the references to sin). For his part, Deasy dreads the Jews...and the economic threat they pose to his beloved British State...and disgusts the acts of women such as Helen and Eve, for a "woman brought sin into the world" (2.390)...and a "woman too brought Parnell low" (2.394). So, secondly, based on literary parallelism, the three from Episode One almost match the three from Portrait, so why shouldn't the three from Episode Two line up? One: Church, the moral constraints of Catholicism and the original sin of Eve; Two: State, the British intellectuals (like Haines, who saw another Hamlet theory somewhere, the "Son striving to be atoned with the Father"--note the capitalization) and the UK economy (forcing Stephen to become a "distrait beggar"--again, read Hamlet if you like); so, three: Stephen's "odd jobs" should line up with the concern he expressed to Davin in Portrait about "language," the Episode One discussion with the old milkwoman about her native language, and Episode Two's "plot," which opens with three lessons on failure (a failed savior, Pyrrhus; a failed bridge, the Kingstown pier and, a failed sailor, Lycidas) and Deasy's letter which forces Stephen on his bullock-befriending mission to visit Crawford (the newspaper editor). In short, Stephen is concerned--with life, yeah, but aren't we all--right now he's worried about not having enough money to afford his own trousers and regretting having to sell his talent--either to Crawford or Artifoni (of course, as we learn in Episode Nine: he is the only Dana contributor "who asks for pieces of silver" (9.1081)...sooooo, frustrated that he cannot make a living by art, e.g., he is still stuck as "Young Man," not yet "Artist," he whines and pisses about having to get his pretty little hands dirty with paid-writing (or, what the Greeks called pornography--as in what Bloom is buying that afternoon). Again, just my opinion.
Well Nick,
Such a load of words and learning.
I don't really have a reply to all that thought and opinion beyond what I expressed in my video 'James Joyce's Ulysses and the Failure of our Educational System.'
I'm not trying to be rude or dismissive when I say this, but you and your learning do not belong here at the Omphalos Cafe. I've been forthright about that in several videos, saying and fully meaning: this place is not for everyone.
What's going on here, for want of better terms, is on a different plain of experience, a different dimension. It's a case of Apples and Oranges, or much more accurately, Oranges and Golden Apples.
I just went in to my compendium of quotes for something apt to the moment here, and while there were a good dozen that might have served I've settled for this simple one which will serve for the intent of my videos and Joyce's work as a whole:
"The satori plane can never be reached by the rationalistic plane, however ingeniously it may be handled."- D.T. Suzuki, Living By Zen, pg. 94
All the best, Nick, but please spare the Cafe your opinion in the future.
Great video! Very helpful stuff.
These 'six tips' are delivered in a very highbrow, obscure fashion that renders them quite useless to the everyday reader taking on the novel.
Tip #1 is relatively useless. I think the presenter is alluding to Joyce's evolving literary method, which demanded more reader interpretation of the available text, due to a lack of overt authorial reflection or narrative commentary within that text. The reader is left to pick up on repeated allusions and motifs, both on a micro and macro level, and to garner understanding through the context of the surrounding text. Joyce's aesthetic development is actually a theme of the earlier novel A Portrait of the Artist, but it cannot be considered a theme of Ulysses. I Don't understand how this constitutes a helpful 'tip' to aid comprehension
I agree with tip #2 to a degree. Yes just read the novel, but your comprehension will be aided by two factors: 1) Reading Joyce's earlier novels Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist prior to tackling Ulysses 2) Getting hold of a good guide as well as a student edition of the novel with annotations. The presenter is 100% correct when he states that you do not need to have an understanding of Homer's Odyssey, as Joyce mainly uses the classical plot to give structure to his text rather than meaning, so although a knowledge of it may provide some understanding of the allusions to the classical text, focusing upon it may actually detract from the overall plot, sub-plots and themes of Ulysses. Anyway, a good annotated text will draw attention to the Homeric structure and references for you. It is all well and good 'thinking for yourself' like Joyce, Bloom and Molly, but understanding is a product of scaffolding, we expand upon the knowledge we already have by making connections. A good guide is essential to understanding.
Tip #3: At 8:45 'Wow!' - absolute nonsense that didn't 'blow my mind'. How does this help the everyday reader to comprehend the text and enjoy the experience. Joyce places enough information scattered throughout the text so that the reader can reach some kind of understanding - one which is particularly unique to them - so when the presenter, like other commentators, suggests that Joyce didn't care less if others understood his text, he is mistaken. Joyce leaves the level and extent of any understanding firmly with the reader, be they an academic literary professional or your average Joe.
Tip#4: More nonsense - don't understand how focusing on Stephen aids comprehension. Yes, as everyone knows, Stephen is Joyce's younger literary incarnation, but Bloom is his older literary alter-ego. There are many nuanced similarities between the two characters, as noted by numerous critics, so that the eventually coming together of the pair amounts to a union of two halves. At 12:05 the presenter erroneously states that Stephen's reference to a 'third' entity that 'wants me for odd-jobs' represents 'life'. The 'third' is actually Mr Deasy, the Anglo-Irish headmaster who provides Stephen with part-time employment as a teacher.
Tip#5: More nonsense. The reference to the 'keys' is just one of many repeated motifs throughout the novel. However, it is one example of the many methods Joyce uses to link his two main protagonists.
Tip#6: This 'tip' has more potential than the rest, as the presenter notes the strong textual links between the two characters throughout the novel.
My one and only tip to anyone reading the novel is as per tip#2. You do not need to be a highbrow intellectual or academic to read Ulysses, nor should you approach the text from any prescribed academic perspective, rather you should negotiate your own understanding with the aid of a good guide book and annotations. If you are a student daunted by the possibility of having to read Joyce's modern epic and potentially write essays or answer exam questions related to it, you are worrying unnecessarily. Joyce's text is littered with a combination of factual references and obscure literary allusions and motifs, an encyclopaedic scattering of the knowledge and experience contained within the mind of the author himself. There is so much secondary writing in relation to Ulysses, that formulating and supporting any essay argument is made much easier. Moreover, Joyce's elusive literary method has one massive advantage in relation to academic writing, because textual understanding and meaning is a matter of reader inference to a much greater extent than other novels, there are no wrong or right 'answers' in relation to this text. This is why negotiating your own understanding is important, as it will render your writing on the subject more individual and you should be able to make some insightful deductions of your own, rather than regurgitate what has already been mooted in the world of literary academia. You are truly free to explore the text without fear of failing to conform to preconceived literary expectations.
One more point, the nature of Ulysses's difficulty means that there numerous people that butter-up their own ego's by playing the role of 'experts' doling out there own (often misinformed and ludicrous) understanding of the novel. These egoists often like the power their understanding of the novel grants them over the uninitiated, while their desire is to be perceived as superior intellectuals. These are the very people Joyce's very open text was designed to undermine, and their opinion/interpretation of the novel is no more valuable than any other reader.
You know, Hainsey-Boy, these are precisely the sort of comments I responded to with my video James Joyce's Ulysses and the Failure of Our Academic System. They are full of big words, haughty, and say and commit to absolutely nothing. Heaven forbid you open your ears to something new.
"Joyce's aesthetic development is actually a theme of the earlier novel A Portrait of the Artist, but it cannot be considered a theme of Ulysses." That's idiotic and incredibly shallow, as is your assertion that the third 'entity' Stephen is a servant to is Mr. Deasy, which I responded to in my video on episode nine, but don't bother watching, stick to the classroom.
What actually is the point of responding to comments such as yours', I ask myself. Those that are capable will see, will feel, what I am getting at, the vast majority, you a prime example, simply are not constituted for such things.
Big of you to grant me number two, 'think for yourself,' but of course you immediately qualify that by saying one should get an annotated text and read what all the authoritative commentaries and Coles notes have to say so you can be coached beforehand on the proper way of 'thinking for yourself.' Again, classroom bred idiocy.
That bit about Bloom being the older literary Joyce I've heard before too. What a crock of shit you're all passing back and forth. Could Bloom write anything? Has he written anything? He mulls such a thing over, but really isn't capable. As the question and answer episode towards the end states, Dedalus represents an artistic nature, Bloom a scientific.
In short, you're an ass and you didn't get anything I was alluding to. As to that final bit about me being an 'egoist', 'expert' and 'superior intellectual,' nothing could be further from the truth. Have you read any Joseph Campbell, who's Creative Mythology refers to Joyce and Ulysses no less than fifty times? A quote from him, a savage indictment of our modern academic morass, I used in my Failure of Our Academic System, and it applies to you, especially around the words "this blight of the soul." Why haven't you read Campbell? Is it too much of a challenge? Is Campbell not considered among the 'authorities' worthy of consideration?
What I'm actually trying to do with these videos, and there are a dozen or so of them now, is to indicate that there might be something else going on in the book, something actually simpler than school boys such as yourself could possibly fathom, and yet something bigger than anything we can conceive without radically altering our outlook on Life.
Well said, you're right. Welcome to the cafe where there's no customers... because none of this advice is relevant to the book.
Omphalos: Apologies if you feel offended by my criticism, but I would just like to clarify a couple of points. Firstly, any perusal of Joyce's own critical writing clearly highlights that his own aesthetic theory is a theme of his earlier work, while he actually puts that theory into practice in the creation of Ulysses it cannot really be considered a theme of the novel.
I reiterate the obvious given the context in which Stephen identifies the three masters he serves as an Irish subject: the Roman Catholic Church, the British Empire and the minority elite within Ireland represented by the Anglo-Irish headmaster Mr Deasy. This fact is not even open to debate, as Stephen's implication is clearly evident to anyone with the slightest understanding of the context of the novel's historical setting.
Finally, you would have to be a genius beyond measure to tackle Ulysses without a guide book to aid comprehension, particularly in relation to Joyce's encyclopaedic references to a variety of areas, be it religion, philosophy, literature, art, music or Irish history. As I stated in my original comment, guide books help to identify Joyce's factual references and context, while interpreting meaning is, to a much greater extent than other novels, a matter of personal inference.
Once again, apologies if my criticism offended you, but I stand by my comments.
You're absolutely right, Willy, none of this advice is relevant to the book AS TAUGHT IN SCHOOL, which is the reason school is utterly irrelevant to what is going on in the world about us. Stick to it though, Willy-Boy, you're safe and secure in the crowd.
Wow, you've got her all figured out there Leo. No need to go any further with it.
That service to Mr. Deasy is a lock up, not even open to debate, though of course Stephen will be breaking that servitude by the end of the book when he throws over the job.
Like I said, shallow and one-dimensional. As the reply to your comment by Willy Rich is, saying what's going on here at the Cafe has no relevance to the book, but really meaning 'no relevance to the book AS TAUGHT IN SCHOOL.' The funny thing being if anyone were to truly look at what is going on I'm actually the only one talking about and referencing the book. Everyone else, yourself included, talk this and that, a bunch of academic blatherspeak, and say absolutely nothing.
In my synopsis of episode nine video I used this quote, directly from A Portrait, in response to the servitude thing: "The end he had been born to serve yet did not see had led him to escape by an unseen path and now it beckoned to him once more and a new adventure was about to be opened to him." Indeed I said that could be taken as a principal theme of Ulysses, because that is precisely what is taking place in the book. Stephen, as the young Joyce did, is in the process of, as he says to Mr. Deasy "awakening (or escaping) from the nightmare of history." As Joseph Campbell put it, but then who reads Campbell?, drawing a parallel between it and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain: "Next, in Ulysses (1922) and The Magic Mountain (1924), two accounts of quests through all the mixed conditions of a modern civilization for an informing principle substantial to existence…”
Careful now, Leo, I'll go a step further. You won't hear this one in school. Not enough insight, not enough imagination, or courage for that matter to say anything outside of the canonically accepted.
Stephen/Joyce, as I said, is relating in fictional form his awakening from the nightmare of history. And what does a fella do who has attained to that state? Well, either he goes off into his own personal nirvana or he stay behind in this world and help others in waking up as well. And what is the last book Stephen/Joyce writes? Finnegans Wake! Wake up all you Finnegans, all you people trapped in the endless round of attachment to birth and death, triumph and defeat, right and wrong.
Ah, but what's the use? You don't offend me, you disappoint me, runnin with the crowd as you are. Listen to Hermann Hesse on this whole thing: “A schoolmaster would rather have a whole class of duffers than one genius, and strictly speaking he is right, for his task is not to educate unusual boys but to produce good Latinists, mathematicians, and good honest fools.”
But then, what really is a genius? To me, it's a word used by lazy people who don't want to put in the work to describe those who do.
And this whole Stephen Dedalus/James Joyce Ulysses thing? Here's Hesse again: “….We have the comfort of knowing that in true geniuses the wounds almost always heal, and they become people who create their masterpieces in spite of school and who later, when they are dead and the pleasant aura of remoteness hangs over them, are held up by schoolmasters to succeeding generations as exemplary and noble beings.”
As I've often said, Bloomsday is for the schoolish masses, Dedalusday (a term coined here by the way) for the very few.
"Um.... Sir.... Sir.... is that going to be on the exam?"
"GET OUT OF HERE!"
1, Have a pint of porter by your hand 2,do NOT hold the book upside down 3, Be sitting in the Martello Tower in Sandymount 4, Ignore all the critics especially Anthony Burgess 5.do not talk or listen to any American about Ulysses cause all Americans think they are omniscient 6, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES watch ANY film that offers you six tips on Wlysses
great insights. Thank you very much.
Wish i could live in irland for ever 🇮🇪💚♥️ best regards for your video sir .
Dedalus Day coming around again...what is so rare as day in june
Thanks for your insight
Ah yes, Dedalus Day! A day to celebrate a rare breed, those who would strive to restore the balance we've all lost, those who would go on the Hero's Journey (that's from Joseph Campbell) and rediscover the essence of Life lost in the tangle and confusion of ongoing history (that's actually what Stephen means when he says 'history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake), our individual relationship to Life, to one another (in community), and the community as a whole's (now comprising the entire planet) essential relationship with the Life.
The celebrant of Dedalus Day seeks to transcend his parochial upbringing and the conditioning involved in order to tap into the universal flow that is Life and then share that awakened wisdom with all his brothers and sisters.
There is a oneness to ALL Life which the celebrant of Dedalus Day is seeking out, and it is only in the awareness of that Oneness that our collective salvation resides.
Happy Dedalus Day, Kristine,
Jeff
Thank you for your insights on how to approach Ulysses. Despite some trepidation that my ego might take a hit while engaging Ulysses, I'm going to give it a go. Have recently reread both Portrait of an Artist and Dubliners. Visited Dublin years ago and my daughter is currently a student at Trinity. I have 6 weeks before I return to practicing medicine after having to deal with alcohol and an inappropriate relationship that almost destroyed my career and life.
Thanks for that James. You must be proud of your daughter, and good luck with challenges life can throw in our path. I'd say forget the ego when tackling Ulysses. You're obviously a reasonably intelligent non-academically literate man and a fair question to ask is with a hundred years of high powered scholarship filling libraries behind it, why can't a single academic tell anybody in plain words that make intuitive sense what the book is about? And the answer is simple: they've all been on the wrong track!
I intend on starting my next video on the subject with the Joyce quote: "With me the thought is always simple." The video will be titled "James Joyce's Ulysses, Awakening to the Wonder", and the premise is that Ulysses is less about Bloom as about James Joyce's path he took to the enlightened place he got to and wrote Ulysses and Finnegans Wake from. Stephen Dedalus says "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken," and that is precisely what he is in the process of doing. Bloom is important, as a friend to Stephen, his first and only.
Oh, and one last thing. The Stephen we meet when we first open the book is not ready to encounter the woman he craves, however, the Stephen who departs Bloom's backyard at the end is, and indeed Dedalusday is June 16, 1904 because that's the day Stephen/Joyce first walked out with Norah, who would become his wife.
I am a writer. I've Been Told to expand to become a better writer I am to read. I just hate when I'm reading a classic book and just don't get it. I hope with this video I can better understand Ulysses. Thank you very much.
Hmm, yes, all the writers I've learned from over a long career of reading have been tremendously well-read themselves. Frankly, I do not see any other way of surmounting this era of supposed reason, but subtle superstition, fantasy, and (self-serving) willful ignorance. And in fact my blog and then these videos, including 'James Joyce's Ulysses: Awakening to the Wonder', 'James Joyce's Ulysses And The Failure Of Our Academic System,' and my last word on the subject, 'James Joyce's Ulysses; Wake Up You Blockheads,' is the fruit of nearly 35 years of largely solitary reading. Just finished a fun read titled 'Fantasyland, How America Went Haywire,' by Kurt Anderson. Best of luck in your journey, Phil.
Just came across your channel! This video was brilliant and highly enjoyed! Thank you! I subscribed and look forward to watching all your previous videos! Beautiful work here!
Here's how to enjoy Ulysses:
Toss it in the garbage.
A really interesting video. Thank you. This IS relevant to developing an understanding of the book and I shall return here with interest as my reading progresses. (Who is this 'everyday reader' that we are supposed to reference as a gauge for the acceptability of commentary, or even of the book itself. It insults the notional 'average' person at the same time as it purports to be their champion. Besides, it's OK to struggle with things isn't it, to be challenged?)
But I confess I find the tone of the 'debate' in these comments incredibly tiresome. One-upmanship of the crudest kind. I'm interested in Joyce and 'Ulysses', not the worst kind of smart-arse swaggering.
30 sec into your video, I have subscribed and liked. :)
This is brilliant. Thank you.
Well thanks Jeremy, I've largely lost interest in making these type videos anymore. Just kinda growing disillusioned with the shallowness and inanity of this whole UA-cam medium, and have retreated back into my original blog at omphaloscafe.com.
You see, the sort of self-growth I'm really aiming at, as Joyce is aiming at in Ulysses as well, is not what our much vaunted educational system promotes. It's a slower, deeper, and more organic process, precisely the opposite of what we all are subjected to from kindergarten upwards.
Anyway, I've said my peace on the subject in 'James Joyce's Ulysses And The Failure Of Our Academic System' and given my last video word on Joyce in 'James Joyce's Ulysses; Wake Up You Blockheads!'
All the best.
Great video.. I'm from Dublin
I visited Dublin and the James Joyce Centre a couple of years ago now. It was the inspiration for my last viral smash of a Joyce video: James Joyce's Ulysses, Wake Up You Blockheads.
My favourite section is Cyclops as it is set in my boyhood backyard. Eventually, I looked at Homer chapter 9 eventually. I loved/am loving it so am grateful to JAJ for sending me there. What on earth has it to with his Ulysses?
Hi Brian, thanks for the comment. I particularly liked the 'What on earth...' part. Very good question. I'd amplify it though: 'what on earth does anything academia has to say about Ulysses have to do with the actual book Ulysses?'
And the answer is, very little. Why? Because they plain and simply don't get that Ulysses is actually James Joyce telling the world "this is my journey, This is how I came to be the artist I am. This is my story." It is a transformative tale. His alter ego (and right into Ulysses Joyce is more autobiographical than fictional with Stephen) is undergoing the death to the everyday world of Irish and Dublin concerns that Joyce himself went through, in order to be born again as the universal artist Joyce became. Dedalus, just as Joyce did, will indeed 'wake from the nightmare of history.'
My last video on the subject is 'James Joyce's Ulysses: Wake Up You Blockheads.'
That, in short, is what is truly taking place in the book. However, no academic has made that journey, nor undergone such a transformation, indeed they remain veritable pillars of the status quo, which is the reason why they entirely miss the point, as well as why our entire educational system incur much scorn and derision from Joyce in both Ulysses and The Wake.
Episode two spells out Joyce's attitude to our educational system. 'The futility' Stephen thinks, drumming inanities into Irish kids heads they cannot understand nor should they. Joyce will not be a 'teacher' in that sense, but one in a shaman/buddhist sense.
It is entirely unclear as to whether the two will ever meet again. Probably not.
This was amazingly helpful. I give thanks
Excellent talk
I LOVE : James Joyce, Emile Zola, Proust, DH Lawrence, EA Poe, HP Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Robert Silverberg, KAFKA !!!! , Tom Wolfe, all the Russian Authors, William Blake, and so many, many more. BUt NOT Ernest Hemingway.
Ah yes, books, books, books. But referring to books, what could the young James Joyce be meaning when he has his alter ego Stephen in Ulysses think "coffined words?"
One of the biggest reasons I contend that almost no one grasps what is actually taking place in the book is the fact that in Stephen Dedalus Joyce is really telling the world how he became the artist that he did. And when I say Artist I put him on a much profounder level than most of the so-called 'artists' of today. I believe that with this notion that Joyce is in reality sharing his own development, his own death and resurrection (just like Proust was in his mighty tome) into fully fledged Shaman/Buddha/Genuine Artist every single word and thought Stephen utters is absolutely crucial to understanding both what is going on in the novel but more importantly what we today are struggling to come to grips with.
"Coffined words" are the dead remains of what once lived, just like seashells on a seashore. Unless we ourselves succeed in plumbing to the depths of life's essence and divine mystery within ourselves those words and those books remain up on a pedestal or shelf, or in the sterile confines of academia, to be 'tackled' by educated blowhards and parroted back for grades. (Haines the academic used that term 'tackled' when referring to his conversation with Stephen in the opening chapter. He was utterly incapable of grasping on an experiential level what the young Joyce was trying to say.)
Good luck with all the books, books and more books, Linda.
I want to just batter on and get right into Ulysses, but I still feel like I need to read The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Dubliners, Portrait of an Artist and maybe even some Dante just to get a base understanding of some of the most obvious references in the book. Not sure if you’ve heard of Frank Delaney’s podcasts on his channel ‘Re:Joyce’. It’s brilliant that I can follow him and any other guide, but I would rather read it alone with no outside interference and understand it on my own, even though I know this is probably not possible.
Ahh, yes, that’s how they get you! And that, too, is the sickness of our age. Don’t go it alone! Don’t follow your own hunches, the little voice inside yourself. Follow the guides, teachers and professors. Sit in that classroom!
Well, Herr Klamm, thankfully a few of your countrymen didn’t follow the guides and did go it alone. Goethe of course, who’s ‘Apprenticeship of a Young Something-or-Other’ is referenced in Ulysses in regards to Stephen/the young James Joyce. Goethe’s work was loosely biographical, as Ulysses is! Thomas Mann recounts the same sort of individual journey in many of his works, as does Hermann Hesse. Nietzsche too took that solitary path, but the isolation his day proved too arduous and he went insane; while Spengler just turned dour.
This video was an early work. Had I to do it over I would say simply: Stephen Dedalus IS the young James Joyce and in the book Joyce is saying “Folks, ignore the academics, THIS is how I got to the place from which I wrote Ulysses and Finnegans Wake!”
Everyone faced with Ulysses comes to that fork in the road. Should they take the extremely well trodden path, follow the guides, read the primers, seek out the so called ‘authorities’, or should they hack their way into that dark and overgrown and obviously unused opening, which might not even be an opening? Has their education up to that point in their lives inclined them towards a certain well worn path? Do they even have a choice anymore?
Yes, I would say, we still do have a choice.
I know which path most people take, and I know which path I took.
The one I took has led me here to the Cafe.
The Omphalos Cafe I’m actually Scottish: Herr Klamm is my online name taken from a Kafka book. I studied English literature at university, so going by your comment you must think I’m some kind of fool for starting off down that well-trodden path as you call it. To give you an update anyway, I decided to just start with Joyce. I read Dubliners to give me a feel for the man (it was decent overall, but The Dead was fantastic) and I am now two thirds through Portrait. I had a very Catholic upbringing-though not quite Jesuit level-and I was very much a daydreamer like Dedalus/Joyce, fascinated with the world around me, immersed in my sensory perceptions. I also feel like I fell into the same mind prison that Stephen does, and became detached and introverted. Unlike Stephen, I don’t think I’ve made a full recovery, despite turning my back on my religion at around 15 years of age. I’m getting a lot from Portrait despite not being familiar with a lot of the references. My problem, though, is my own curiosity. When it come up against something that I don’t quite understand, I will google that reference to get as much knowledge and understanding I possibly can from it. When I come across song lyrics Joyce has mentioned, I listen to the song on UA-cam. It constantly disrupts the my flow but I can’t help it. I don’t see the point in reading words and sentences I cannot comprehend. I also find it quite hard to follow Stephen’s stream of consciousness - it can actually be quite dizzying, leaving me feeling a bit nauseous. This is also very similar to my own way of thinking - scattered and never ending; repetitive, inconclusive, futile. I’m going to finish it and jump into Ulysses in the next few days. I’m a bit worried that I have built my expectations up far too much for this book. Something about it always called to me. I’ve always known I need to read it, I just don’t know why it’s always drawn me toward it.
Well HK, there’s a lot going on in your comment, a lot that runs deep into what I might call the challenge of our age.
So I’ll dive in saying it is not learning I am critical of but our educational institutions, ‘institution’ being a crucial word here. In a response to another comment I wrote that Joyce strikes right to the heart of the matter precisely in Ulysses with his portrayals of Haines and Prof. McHugh. Haines studies literature but he refuses or ignores the disregarded psychic source of his terror of panthers in the night, most probably related to repressed sexuality. Therefore he studied the outside world without experiencing his inner world and hence participating from an integrated perspective.
But that is nothing less than the prime condition of Western Mankind, and in my opinion a driving force for Western Man’s much vaunted intellectual ‘enlightenment.’ Reason has forged ahead while the psycho-spiritual foundation was never fully laid and the weakness in it have never truly been acknowledged.
By the way, between reading A Portrait and Ulysses, why not read a small volume called ‘Stephen Hero?’ The timeline of Joyce’s autobiography overlaps A Portrait and precedes Ulysses by about a year or two at most. Seminal months in Joyce’s development which ‘literature’ seems to ignore completely. And while reading it ask ‘why was this unpublishable and A Portrait, after endless compromises, was?’
So continuing: a religion is a psycho-spiritual combination of poetic mythic elements teaching an inner tale to a people, drawing them into membership and identity with the group and giving them a sort of cosmological viewpoint or orientation with the world. Judaism is a powerful and highly closed example of such a religious system. Christianity, an offshoot of Judaism, is slightly more open but still reserves the right to ‘ex-communicate’ those who would deny its all-encompassing validity.
But what if one of those systems no longer serves the deep inner needs of its members? What if the world has changed and our knowledge of it too has left the quaint old tales comprising the old system no longer ‘feeling’ authentic to our inner lives any more? Where are we to turn then?
That is really the question addressed with a great many works over the last hundred to two hundred years, including Joyce’s work.
But here’s another thing, Herr MacKlam, what if a people never quite had the chance to fully realize and ‘systematize’ their deepest psycho-spiritual truths before another was ruthlessly imposed upon them by a more technologically (including literate) advanced peoples? As an example I might offer our North American First Nations Peoples dragged off their lands and sent to Christian schools. How would an eventual quest for deepest inner meaning look for such a psycho-spiritually displaced peoples?
Big questions. But that is your story too as well as mine. Northern Europe’s nascent psycho-spiritual religion was almost totally stamped out by it’s leader’s adoption of Christianity, a system with it’s roots not in Northern Europe but in the dying classical world of Ancient Rome and beyond that to the desert of the Eastern Mediterranean.
And so we today are left leaving a religious ‘system’ behind which if truth were told was never truly our own and never truly met the needs of our Northern willful world!
Wow, ponder that, because that is us!
The Omphalos Cafe Herr MacKlam, haha! Good one. You can call me Mark if you want. Appreciate your response. You make some interesting points I had never deeply pondered before, particularly with the point that relates to your video with the clip from the film Gladiator - when reading about Columbus, Cortez etc. i always, regretfully, associated myself as one of the Europeans. I had never considered that my true bloodline was not of those European conquerors but of some lost tribe. Your point about lost spiritual meaning is something, I think, worth pondering. The thought itself is a bit depressing - I’d like to imagine that we can recover from any kind of loss of a spiritual past. I’m almost finished with Portrait. It started to get a bit dense for me when Stephen begins to discuss aesthetics and Aquinas/Plato. I’m having to slow down a lot and concentrate to follow him. I would read Stephen Hero but I am honestly eager to jump into Ulysses after this. I don’t want to wait any longer.
Well, hate to say it, but I can because with a last name like Smith I too am of Scottish or English derivation, but we are the Conquistadores! We did that and continue to do that across the globe.
However, and this is what is not quite understood, we were also a thousand years earlier those rude ‘barbarians’ the Romans fought at the outset of ‘Gladiator.’ They won that battle, but we would win the war and reshape the map first of Europe and now of the world. And this is also where it gets interesting, because having won the political and military war (and those indomitable Scots were never conquered) we submitted to a more advanced religious teaching rather than stick with our own less developed one. Hence the Arthurian Grail King suffering from a ‘dolorous’ wound through the genitals by a lance that pierced the side of Christ.
Therein is the schism in the Western Soul! Having gained the right to political self-determination from that dying and corrupt Roman world we surrendered to its consolatory religious system, namely Roman Catholic Christianity. In Protestantism the warrior soul of the West breaks free from submission to the Pope, but having none of its own nascent oral tradition left it falls back upon the warrior ways of those Old Testament early Jews.
Big stuff, but truly foundational to our modern seeking soul. And by the way, you can also write me at my blog’s (Omphaloscafe.com) address: Omphaloscafe@gmail.com.
Gotta drive my truck.
He doesn’t explicitly state that it is a work designed to deliver the reader to the signifier unhinged from a discourse...thus a liberation from the designs of power!!!
Wow, didn't understand a word of that, and I'm guessing you didn't understand a word of what I was getting at either.
The Omphalos Cafe I was seriously drunk when I wrote that. I was also seriously enjoying myself as well. That liberation from power stuff was nothing more than idiotic sporting. The signifier stuff however is another way of saying something of what you yourself claimed. It was an affirmation. I like that neither one of us understood each other...and this time around I’m not drunk!
Back from the pub where I was enjoying a few cold ones. I'll admit my response was a little short, mostly because I had just responded to yet another over intellectualized pile of bilge by Leopold down below. However, being drunk while writing and what's more important, seriously enjoying yourself, earns extra points in my books. Thanks for that and all the best.
The Omphalos Cafe my yes no harm. I certainly enjoy your take on Joyce. I still have an hour and 27 minutes til the pubs close here. No time to lose.
The comment below may be right to criticise you for making gaudy promises. It is one of the most analysed literatary texts in existence. But good insights nonethless. Especially about not having to read Dante and Homer beforehand. Ulysses isn't like Faust in that respect.
Gaudy promises? Me? You're talking literary analyses and I'm talking personal growth in this troubled modern world we find ourselves trying to navigate. Two completely different things, and probably mutually incompatible.
02:53 Блум не еврей?
03:00 Молли не изменила Блуму с Больно в соломенной шляпе?
Bloom himself, in the book, talking to Stephen in the cabman's shelter (episode 16?) says "Actually, I'm not really a Jew." Very important to understanding the true depth of Ulysses. Stephen is no longer Roman Catholic, Bloom is no longer Jewish, and Molly (modelled after Joyce's wife Norah) never was anything at all (except a devotee of Life!). All three are beyond 'religion', but beyond organized religion what is there? You could even say what is there for us today, having largely gone beyond the religions bequeathed to us from the past (which Stephen is trying to awaken from.) That is what the book is really about: what there is beyond, what there is to wake up to, and not coincidentally what Stephen is waking up to following the breakdown of the brothel episode. And what does Stephen/Joyce title his last book? Finnegans Wake! Wake up to something new folks, wake up to all of Life!
@@theomphaloscafe3501 я буду пропагандировать Вашу версию, что Молли не изменяла. Раскольников у Достоевского не убивал ростовщицу, но взял вину на себя как юродивый.
@@theomphaloscafe3501 Бойлан - сын торговца лошадьми, а они обманщики: он всех обманывает, что Молли доступна. Джойс любит запутать
@@anatolyyurkin6635 Molly only 'cheated' in a conventional sense, one based on the morality of the time and upheld by the religion of the age. But Stephen, Bloom, and especially Molly have gone beyond the religious morale of the age. Think of it, Bloom has not made love to Molly for nearly 10 years due to setbacks and pressures in his own life. Molly is 33 years old and has remained 'faithful' to him for ten years. Is she 'cheating' when she, the most living of all the characters in the book, finally takes a lover, or is she being true to Life? Bloom has been the typical modern man who has lost his purpose and in a sense manhood in life, undermined by many things. However, in meeting Stephen (and were you aware that Stephen though being totally cut off from the world of Dublin, utterly severed from any vital connection to the people and their ways, actually dreams of meeting Bloom the night before the action of the book takes place?) Bloom retrieves a sense of purpose and begins to take control of things again in his life and in a way retrieves his manhood. I love the fact that when we first meet him he is making breakfast for Molly in bed, back in the day a reversal of male-female roles; and then read the first line of Molly's amazing chapter 18: she's outraged because Bloom has told her he wants his breakfast in bed when he wakes! That fact, which so upsets Molly at first, sets in motion her own reappraisal of things and brings home to her a sense that Bloom as a man is back and there might just possibly be a future again with him.
@@anatolyyurkin6635 I don't agree that Joyce 'loves to confuse.' I believe people don't truly understand what the book is about and therefore miss what is taking place and the profound import of it. Boylan is a player, boastful and vain, like so many people these days. For want of anyone else to make love to her Molly chooses him, but aside from the fact that she was well shtumped it was an unsatisfying experience.
How can he state that Molly is not unfaithful to Bloom with Blazes Boylan?
when is daedelus day?
When are you going to get to the dirty parts for which the book was baned? LOL
This kind of guy is not my guy.
You have 20 million subscribers?
What do you mean by saying Bloom isn't a jew?
Also Jewish lineage is passed down maternally and since Bloom's mother was not Jewish technically he is not either
@@philiph9983 He's dad also converted to some sect of Christianity
If I need tips for reading and understanding it, it's not very well written, now is it!
A great work of art will not reveal itself all at once.
You and your personality are far too present in this for my taste
I'm sorry, but I don't care a damn for your 'taste,' Sam.
Any thoughts on Joyce? Have you read anything by him and has that triggered any reflections, any associations, any connections with experiences of your own or other books you might have read?
I notice you have no videos of your own on the subject, or any subject whatsoever. Why is that, Sam?
The reason, I believe, is that leaving comments such as this is easy, requires nothing of yourself, and adds nothing whatsoever to the conversation at hand. UA-cam is filled with stuff like it.
It's part of the age we live in, one of noise and distraction. If you're another Christian who has stumbled upon this quiet place, ponder the deep meaning of Babel, noise, hubbub and confusion.
Write back when you've posted your first video, Sam, and I'll have a look. Otherwise, don't bother leaving your foolish comments. Several times in my videos I've stated these videos aren't for everyone, this place is not for everyone.
I was thinking of people like you when I said that.
Hey, his comment wasn't the usual youtube rage. It was critical but specific. I happen to agree that your mode of speaking overshadowed Joyce a bit. If you don't want to adapt to Sam's input because you'd prefer the style of videos to stay exactly as originally thought up, that's fine. However, there's no need to demonize Sam.
Hey, you got anything to say on the subject matter of the video, or is it all this new age 'I've got an opinion and I'm entitled to it no matter how little experience I have of life or reflection I've put into whatever the teacher told me I have to read?'
"Critical but specific?" Specific about what, may I ask?
What do you have to say about Joyce, Case? Have any thoughts on the subject? Or is it the old Homer parallel business the professor in front of the room droned on about? Or is Joyce beyond you? have you read any Joseph Campbell, anything at all actually that relates to our life right here and right now, as Joyce actually does.
Too much me? There has to be more me, and more you too if you ever get around to actually formulating a thought of your own on the subject besides "you're so mean" and "that's not fair!"
Life moves on, and life is really what I'm pointing at with this stuff. Taking Joyce off his pedestal and back where he belongs, down in the street and walking the fields with you and me and anyone else who's willing and able enough to truly go it on their own.
"Art... is the very central expression of life. An artist is not a fellow who dangles a mechanical heaven before the public. The priest does that. The artist affirms out of the fulness of his own life, he creates..." Thus saith Stephen Dedalus in Stephen Hero, but of course who has read that? It's not part of the cannon, not taught in school.
This place isn't for everyone, Case. I've been honest and open about that. It's not for the spoonfed, not for those who've sat in a classroom in order to get the credits and the degree. It's for those beyond that, out the other side and still curious. I'm talking a curiosity like hunger.
More and more I realize that's not the age we live in now, and I'm alright with that. But here at the Cafe at any rate that sort of ethos still applies. It's like a Zen master smacking an obtuse would be student with his staff. He's saying, with action more than words, "wake up you silly little fool, listen deeply and there might be something beneath the surface worth hearing, if you're up to it that is."
Joyce looks throughout this work at life and makes very few judgements; he is taking life as it is, regardless of when Bloom is looking at Gertie or the Citizen is yelling at Bloom or what have you, very little has opinion or a criticism of what is transpiring.
Your somewhat defensive comment against a person who was merely giving his opinion of your presentation neither encourages discussion nor demonstrates a willingness for dialogue. I have disliked this video for that reason. There can be little peace without free speech and a desire to listen to others.
"How win a woman's heart" these type of stereo typing is not smart or valuable , at least not anymore! Man and woman are not things , we can not categorise them!!!!
As I've said before, this stuff is not for everyone, Nancy. People have agendas, ideas and ideals.
Those people generally have little to say about the subject of the videos or blogs, they merely object to something, usually based on some idealistic conception of how things aught to be.
The worst of those are the trolls, who I ask to at the very least explain or enlighten me a little more, perhaps even with examples from the books, rather than simply object to a word or two they find offensive. Usually the reply is more invective, and no explanations or elaborations. They get deleted as fools.
Anyway, believe it or not, Nancy, here at the Omphalos Cafe things are perfect precisely the way they are. That's Life. And all the schooling and theorizing and wishing isn't going to change things one jot.
The principal thing is to celebrate it, revere it, and jump into it just the way it is with both feet. That is the lesson both Bloom and Dedalus are on the road to discovering; that is the lesson that Molly embodies.
When I read lines like the one's you've left I am immediately reminded of Joyce's unpublished fragment 'Stephen Hero,' and Emma, the full bodied but idealistic nationalist Irish lass who captivated Stephen for a time. Her thinking is hard, logical, and chaste, blind to the realities and potentials of life and death to the poetic spirit.
Stay in school.
@@theomphaloscafe3501 Wow. I really enjoyed your video, but this seems like a deliberately obtuse (and dismissive) response to a valid criticism. Nancy may not have explained herself in paragraph form, but she makes a good point. Your idea that the novel explores "how a man earns the love of a good woman" and "what key he need posses in order to be worthy of that love" overlooks some critical ideas.
First, how do you define a "good" woman? From the way you frame your thinking about Molly's affair (not unfaithfulness) with Boylan, you seem to understand that many readers would not consider Molly to be "good" based on her sexual behaviour (I am not one of those readers, to be clear). To me, describing Molly (or ANY woman in the story) as "a good woman" is as simplistic as it would be to describe Bloom as "a good man." He is a complex human with foibles and compassion, shortcomings and endearing qualities, and he sets in motion many things over the course of his day, which have both negative and positive consequences for himself and others. Molly is the same.
Second, the notion of "earning" love is disingenuous. Humans make connections. They love irrationally. They have various natural levels and layers of compatibility. If you told me you "earned" your best friend through certain behaviours, I would find that creepy and I would doubt the foundation of your friendship. Romantic relationships are no different. Molly herself rejects the idea that she was ever "earned" when she is remembering Bloom's proposal: "he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another." Bloom had done nothing to set himself apart from other suitors, or to "earn" her affirmative answer. She married him because they were happy together in that moment. They made a connection, and it made them both happy, and that was enough. She also describes the feelings of the many women like her, "chained up" at home while their husbands roam around town at all hours getting up to God knows what. She understands the fundamental injustice of being treated like just another belonging in a man's home that he has bought or earned, and is sleeping with Boylan as a way of rejecting that view of herself.
Third, your idea that there is a "key" to being worthy of a woman's love is based on the false assumption that women fall in love with men because men "deserve" it. There is no "key" to being worthy of love. Many people ARE loved despite being what you or I might consider UNworthy. Daedalus, Bloom, and Molly are all terribly lonely people, and it's not because they are not worthy of love. They have all lost the connections they once had (Stephen to his mother (patched with hollow friendships to people like Mulligan), and Bloom and Molly to each other through their son), and are at a loss to establish new ones.
Fourth, you link the "Key" to being worthy of love to the "essence of manhood," implying that a real man, by definition, is worthy of a good woman's love. Does a man need a woman in order to be a man? If so, does that mean a woman needs a man in order to be a woman? These ideas are so subjective as to be meaningless. Perhaps the "key" that is referenced in the text so many times is not the key to worthiness of love, but instead the key to human connection. To begin to fight the creeping loneliness by reaching out to the people in our lives and striking the spark that can kindle the hearth fires of companionship. Perhaps the "key" that Bloom forgot at home, and that Stephen gave away, is the key to finding happiness for themselves by extending compassion and seeing to the happiness of others.
It is your phrasing I disagree with more than your point, but I do wish you would explain what you mean more specifically, and certainly when responding to criticism. Nancy didn't deserve the response you gave her. If Nancy's lack of elaboration made you dismiss her as a troll, I hope the elaboration of her point that I have provided will prompt you to at least engage with the substance of this criticism, rather than simply the tone.
Wow, what a shiteload of words, Slovenly, most of which I've responded to already with my videos 'James Joyce's Ulysses and the Failure of Our Academic System' and my latest, 'Dedalusday 2019.'
Now, in the classroom where they come from this might pass as 'critical thinking' or 'analysis,' but here at the Omphalos Cafe they're nothing more than unreadable hogwash. Total bilge. Not worth responding to, really.
However, as in my Dedalusday video, I have a quote from a book for you.
But before I get to the quote, did Nancy put you up to this? Is she still smarting from the well-deserved kick in the pants I gave her? Write to her and tell her to grow up and get over it.
Now the quote. It's from a book called 'Ulysses,' by a guy named James Joyce. It's from episode ten. Stephen Dedalus, one of the trio of heroes in the work is strolling the streets of Dublin and perusing a book cart.
"...[W]hat is this? Eighth and Ninth book of Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this."
Waaa!? Et tu, James Joyce? Et tu?
What could Joyce be getting at here, Slovenly, and why would Stephen wryly think to himself, "For me this?"
Maybe you and Nancy can get together and deconstruct that one. Sounds like there might even be the ingredients for a critical connection there.
But please, discuss it amongst yourselves. Not here.
@@theomphaloscafe3501 Yes, I specifically chose a shiteload of words, because I can see how much you love to criticize people for not explaining themselves in detail. In fact, I am NOT an acquaintance of Nancy's, but rather a bookworm who just finished this amazing, life-changing book you might have heard of. It's a book called 'Ulysses' by a guy named James Joyce (see how pointlessly condescending that is? Do you honestly believe my problem is that I haven't read the book?). I decided to take a spin around the internet to see what others thought of this amazing book, and stumbled across your videos. I watched a couple, thought, "This guy has some interesting ideas! I'd like to hear more!" and then I looked in the comment section and saw what a patronizing jerk you are to anyone who criticizes you. I saw the pointlessly cruel comment you left for Nancy and thought, "Hey, it's 2019, and no one should think it is ok to respond to a woman's valid criticism about the way SHE is thought of, and the sexism that is a part of HER experience, by refusing to engage with the substance of her point and dismissing her as uneducated. You can believe, or not, that more than one person thinks you are an arrogant bully - it's ok to call me Nancy's stooge if it makes you feel better; I know you have your fragile masculinity to protect.
In fact, my analysis was not of the book, really, but of YOUR STATEMENT using wording that you chose. But if my ideas are from the classroom, then you are really in trouble, because I HAVE a classroom wherein I teach 9-year-olds how to read. If my ideas are too advanced for you, then truly, you are the one that needs to "stay in school." (Of course, since you've told me to get OUT of the classroom, I really wonder what level of education you consider acceptable to validate an opinion).
You could have acknowledged that I had a point, as the statement stood, and politely directed me to your follow-up videos for context that would explain what you meant, and thereby salvaged my opinion of you. Instead you chose to berate me for not watching ALL your videos, and respond to my points by taking a sexist idea right out of the book ("How to win a woman's love") and presenting it at face value. And since you asked, there is a lot to be unpacked in Stephen's perusal of that book. Was his thought a foolish/juvenile acceptance of the premise of the book? Did he think a woman would bring him the happiness he sought because that is what he'd been told? Was it a "wry" recollection of the people during his day who had asked him about marriage? Did he see that book as a possible cure for his loneliness? The problem with taking stream-of-consciousness narration at face value is that it is all tangled up in the worries/hopes/beliefs/neuroses of the character, and not necessarily an objective statement.
I am sorry you find my hogwash unworthy of response. If I had any further interest in being condescended to, I'm sure I would see that as a terrible blow.
More words, words, words.
But alright, Slovenly, I'll try another tack.
People come to the Omphalos Cafe, and I've been doing a blog for nearly ten years I'd guess, with ideas, mostly learned in the classroom, though in reality the acquiring of ideas starts at a very early age. Similarly, they come to James Joyce with a great many ideas, many of which you can get an introduction to by the taking in of what is offered across the net.
Nancy, as most other people, including you, came here with ideas. Two of which might be distilled to 'equality' and a perceived prevalence of 'sexism.'
Let me begin with the first: equality. Honestly, open your eyes and look out upon the world and give me one instance of 'equality.' Just one.
Because the reality, and I'm talking the absolute reality here, is that there is nothing equal under the sun. It is a nice idea, but it has no basis in reality.
Are you and I 'equal?' Now this is not a value judgement here. This is not 'I'm better and you're worse,' it is just reality. I might be bigger, I might be smaller, I'm probably older, and as to our brain's retentive capacity, who knows and who really cares?There is character and the fire of Life and we have the ability to harness these, but they are never equal. Equality is an idea people bring here and I'm not interested in ideas, Slovenly, I'm interested in Life.
Hence my exhortation to 'grow up.' That is, get past the reliance and hard shield of ideas society has foisted upon you and take a good hard look at the world as it is, not as we've been taught it 'should' or 'could' or 'will one day' be.
Next: 'sexism.' Sex is everywhere. It is the great dynamic of life. And I'm not talking about a crude act here, I'm talking about the great intertwined dance of Life. Which is actually the great realization that Joyce is giving artistic form to in Ulysses. Are you really trying to tell me that men and women are 'equal?' And again, there is no value judgement in that question. But to assert that men and women in fact are 'equal' is to betray a foolish young naiveté, an immaturity, or perhaps a deep and unconscious rejection of Life. Stephen meets Bloom and beyond awakening to compassion towards another, he as an artist is coming into contact with a man who in this case was initially out of living dynamic relation with woman but who will in the course of the day come back into that dynamic state of dance, of tension and mutual attraction/repulsion, whatever you might call it.
I'm talking the great Yin Yang of Life. And you know what? Bloom and Molly end their day in the Yin Yang position in bed too!
Again, I'm not talking ideas here, Slovenly. I'm talking, as Elie Faure put it in the title of a book focusing on the stupendous challenge of the genuine artist: 'The Dance Over Fire and Water.'
Arrogance? Not really. Just don't bring you're old and tired out ideas here. They have nothing to do with what's going on. They have nothing to do with Life, and as I've repeatedly said: Life is ALL there is. As my title of the Dedalusday video continued: there is no such thing as thinking outside the box, because thinking IS the box!
That's enough for now. I honestly don't care what other people think, Slovenly. Our ideas get in the way of a genuine connection and experience of Life. All the great artists have come to know that and strive to communicate it, but time and time again people bring their ideas to bare and utterly miss the point as a result.
We live in the age of idea, while reality seems to threaten to swamp us from every direction. The chasm between idea and reality is widening, but to me reality is just biding its time. Unless something changes, unless our ideas shift, reality will probably give us all a good kick in the pants one day.
But actually, that's ok by me, being reality too.
That's what I meant when I responded to Nancy with things are actually perfect just as they are, right now, today. The Kingdom of Heaven is right here around you and you don't even know it. This is Life, right here and now. I say celebrate it, which is the aim of the Cafe at heart. You are it, Slovenly. Not your ideas, not what you've been taught, but you. Not the idea or ideal you cling to of yourself, not the static image your brain has stored away based on reflections in mirrors. Not your perceived self-worth, status, position or job in society. You, freed from all those categories. That's Bloom and Stephen in Ulysses, beyond categories, undefinable. In flow.
Have a nice day, Slovenly.
Peace, in the dance.....
This is astoundingly wrong, starting with the guy's assertion that he has a unique reading of Ulysses ("...so many experts weighing in on the subject...what could I possibly add to the discussion?.... When I pick up and read Ulysses it's as if I'm reading an entirely different book than everyone else has in their hands...") The guy doesn't even get "principle" and "principal" right in his first of six tips. Ugh. I'm done.
Heya Done Man,
Astoundingly wrong? Please elaborate! I clicked on your name and came up with.... nothing.
Have you read the book? Once, twice, just a skim? Did you sit in a classroom and pick up a few key words, like Homer's Odyssey and 'interior monologue' and build what little notion you have of Joyce around that?
The internet is rife with these sorts of comments, Kevin. I get it, they're easy. Fire of a few quick derogatory lines and finish with the a devastating 'I'm done!' But what really have you read, or experienced for that matter? What can you bring to the discussion, any discussion?
Have you read Stephen Hero and A Portrait, Exiles? All of Ulysses? Any of the Wake? Have you read Campbell's A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake? What about a biography of Joyce? Ellmann? Bowker? Are you aware that Campbell has another book out entirely on Joyce titled Mythic Worlds, Modern Words? Or do you go through life firing scorn on others, spewing bile everywhere from the comfort of your mommy's basement?
You're up champ, tell me where I'm wrong. Educate me. I'm open to it.