History

is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Stephen Dedalus

____

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if that
nightmare gave you a back kick?

—The ways of the Creator are not our ways (Mr Deasy said). All human history moves
towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
—That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
—What? (Mr Deasy asked)
—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

____

—Metempsychosis (he said, frowning). It’s Greek: from the Greek. That means the
transmigration of souls…

—They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance.
What they called nymphs, for example.

Leopold Bloom

____

Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great
weapon in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I
schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look down at her
ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Husband learn to his surprise.
God’s little joke. Then out she comes. Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar.
Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers, incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation
army blatant imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the
Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole show. And don’t
they rake in the money too? Bequests also: to the P.P. for the time being in his absolute
discretion. Masses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly with open doors.
Monasteries and convents. The priest in that
Fermanagh will case in the witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for
everything. Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of the
church: they mapped out the whole theology of it.

___

Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways.
—Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine.
Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem mass. Crape
weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. Chilly place this.

Leopold Bloom

___


WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK

A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently. Mr Bloom
stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent typesetters at their
cases.

ORTHOGRAPHICAL

___


-What’s parallax?...
-Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about, crossing each
other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then solid: then world: then cold: then
dead shell drifting around, frozen rock, like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a
new moon out, she said. I believe there is.

Leopold Bloom


___


—A nation? (says Bloom). A nation is the same people living in the same place.
—By God, then, (says Ned, laughing), if that’s so I’m a nation for I’m living in the same
place for the past five years.


___



How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his wife Molly
Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp? With indirect and direct verbal
allusions or affirmations: with subdued affection and admiration: with description:
with impediment: with suggestion.
Both then were silent?
Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal flesh of
theirhisnothis fellowfaces.

[…]

What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the invisible
audible collateral organ of the other?

To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reactivity, dimension,
sanitariness, pilosity.

To Stephen: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised (I January,
holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain from unnecessary servile work) and
the problem as to whether the divine prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy
Roman catholic apostolic church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple
hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine
excrescences as hair and toenails.