Ulysses, James Joyce

Proteus (Stephen Dedalus’ world)

1. Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.
Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that
rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he
adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By
knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro
di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can
put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

2. Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are
walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time
through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the
ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that
beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably. I am getting on nicely
in the dark.

3. His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her womb. Oomb, allwombing,
tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic
planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayawayaway. (…) Among gumheavy
serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far.

Calypso (Leopold Bloom’s world)

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

2. – Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to believe
you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs, for
example.
Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, inhaling through her
arched nostrils.
-There’s a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on fire?
-The kidney! he cried suddenly.

3. A soft qualm regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent.
Useless: can’t move. Girl’s sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm
 spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing kissed. Full gluey woman’s
lips.

Penelope (Molly Bloom’s world)

1. … and they always want to see a stain on the bed to know youre a virgin for them all
thats troubling them theyre such fools too you could be a widow or divorced 40 times
over a daub of red ink would do or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy let me
up out of this pooh sweets of sin whoever suggested that business for women what
between clothes and cooking and children this damned old bed too jingling like the
dickens I suppose they could hear us away over the other side of the park till I suggested
to put the quilt on the floor with the pillow under my bottom (…)

2. (…) Ive a mind to tell him every scrap and make him do it in front of me serve him right
its all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery said O much about it if
thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of tears God knows its not much doesnt
everybody only they hide it I suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or
He wouldnt have made us the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to kiss my
bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his face as large as life he can
stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then Ill tell him I want #1
or perhaps 30/- Ill tell him I want to buy underclothes then if he gives me that well he
wont be too bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other women do (…)

3. (…) O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and
the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little
streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and
geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes
when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and
how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and
then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say
yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to
me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes
I said yes I will Yes.