Monday, March 31, 2014

Page 31 (2.249-285) "Ba!... Dublin."


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Delaney: [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] Useen: [11] [11b] [12] [13] [14] [map] [*]
Delaney: [74]

<
— Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that.
He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.
— I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way.



Delaney: [75]
Good man, good man.
I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe nothing. Can you?
Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Kohler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.
— For the moment, no, Stephen answered.


Mulligan 1901, 1911
Curran 1901, 1911 (otherwise unmentioned in Ulysses-- gratitude for generosity?)
McCann 1901, 1911


Fred Ryan 1901??, 1911

Temple = Dr John ?Rudolph Elwood/Ellwood?

Russell 1901, 1911

Cousins 1901, 1911

Bob Reynolds 1901? neighbor
Keohler 1901 
McKernan 1901, 1911

(missing: Cranly, Eglinton, Yeats, Lady Gregory, relatives)


Delaney: [76]
Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.
— I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We are a generous people but we must also be just.
— I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely bulk of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales.



Delaney: [77]
— You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine in '46. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.


Delaney: [78]
Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters' covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down.
Stephen sketched a brief gesture.


"Croppies lie down" is a chorus of several songs [1810 lyrics] [Auld Orange Flute ]
(the episode has been unmusical until this point!??)

Delaney: [79]
— I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all kings' sons.
— Alas, Stephen said.
Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so.

Lal the ral the ra
The rocky road to Dublin.


>

mysteries:

[DD 02:34-04:37]
[DD 00:00-02:13]


[IM 19:49-22:39]

[LV1 18:43-21:42]

[LV2 15:01-17:18]


nestor: 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36


Friday, March 28, 2014

Page 30 (2.211-248) "Two... sets."


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Delaney: [73] [74] Useen: [11] [11b] [12] [13] [14] [map] [*]
Delaney: [72]

<
— Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.
And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and this, the scallop of saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells.
A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.



Delaney: [73]
— Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand. These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.

belt-style invented later
Joyce may be fabricating here-- it's odd no one has found such a savingsbox yet

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.
— Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right.
— Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.
— No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.
Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed and misery.
— Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy.
Answer something.



Delaney: [74]
— Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.
The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times now. Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this instant if I will.
— Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy purse.
— Iago, Stephen murmured.


"If youth but knew what age will crave, How many a sixpence it would save!"
Othello I.3.345 'Put money in thy purse' (Iago is the villain)


He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.
— He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?
The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.
— That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.


>

mysteries:

[DD 02:22-03:59]
[DD 00:00-02:35]


[IM 16:53-19:49]

[LV1 15:43-18:43]

[LV2 12:34-15:01]


nestor: 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36


Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Page 29 (2.171-210) "our hearts... on the table."


editions: [1922] [html] [arch] [$2] [$4]
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Delaney: [70] [71] [72] Useen: [11] [11b] [12] [13] [14] [map] [*]
Delaney: [69]

<
our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.



Delaney: [70]
The sum was done.
— It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.
— Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.
He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to his bench.
— You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he followed towards the door the boy's graceless form.
— Yes, sir.
In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.
— Sargent!
— Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.
He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry white moustache.


gaiters
Ellmann says JAJ discreetly omits Irwin's red/alcoholic nose


— What is it now? he cried continually without listening.
— Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said.
— Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore order here.
And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice cried sternly:
— What is the matter? What is it now?
Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head.


Francis Irwin, model for Deasy, was only 42, and in 1901 lived with his sister [signature-pdf]


Delaney: [71]
Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end.
A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.


1908 notebook: "Ireland: Irish wits follow in the footsteps of King James the Second who struck off base money for Ireland which the hoofs of cattle have trampled into her soil."

Stuart gunmoney c1700


source


Delaney: [72]
— First, our little financial settlement, he said.
He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them carefully on the table.



>

mysteries:

[DD 02:20-03:21]
[DD 00:00-02:23]


[IM 14:01-16:53]

[LV1 13:02-15:43]

[LV2 10:24-12:34]


nestor: 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36


Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Page 28 (2.134-170) "Do you understand... palaces of both"


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Delaney: [66] [67] [68] [69] Useen: [11] [11b] [12] [13] [14] [map] [*]
Delaney: [65]

<
— Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.
— Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to copy them off the board, sir.


Sargent ignores SD's question, or mishears it

— Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked.
— No, sir.
Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life?


SD seems to be refining his mental descriptions again: cf "His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail's bed... Futility"

"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not." [PoA5, Cranly]


Delaney: [66]
His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been.

Columbanus "the mother... watched over him with so great care that she would scarcely entrust him even to his nearest relatives... [he] glowing with the fire of youth... leaping over both threshold and mother" [cite] c560AD


Delaney: [67]
A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.

'red reek' = color/smell synesthesia
'rapine' = plunder (not bloody)
'in his fur' (not 'on')

cf Swift's Polite Conversation: "her Nails... were long enough to scratch her Granum out of her Grave" [cite]

why "in... up"? (according to the riddle he's burying not plundering, but maybe he's killed his grandmother by plundering?)

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field.
Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors.


why "slanted"? just fear of direct gaze?

fieldhockey originally used cricket balls
morrice/morris dancing [youtube]
"squares and cubes" hints that these boys are older than they sound


Delaney: [68]
Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.
— Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
— Yes, sir.
In long shady strokes Sargent copied the data.


why 'shady'?
"the data" = the given (Euclid's "Data" supplemented his "Elements")

Delaney: [69]
Waiting always for a word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.
Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony, sit in the dark palaces of both


"subjective and objective" = the mother loves/ the mother is loved

swaddling bands
"once or lightly" is SD imagining touching his own memories, or touching Sargent kindly, sympathetically? i think at that time it would have been uncontroversial for a teacher to lay a warm hand on a student, even alone, but we've already seen SD using a book to avoid direct contact

is Sargent in this chapter a premonition of Bloom, as the milkwoman (maybe) was in ch1?

Delaney cites Alice Milligan's poem, The Dark Palace

>

mysteries:

[DD 02:57-04:51]
[DD 00:00-02:21]


[IM 10:24-14:01]

[LV1 09:53-13:02]

[LV2 07:45-10:24]


nestor: 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36


Sunday, March 23, 2014

Page 27 (2.98-133) "A riddle... Futility."


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Delaney: [64] [65] Useen: [11] [11b] [12] [13] [14] [map] [*]
Delaney: [63]

<
— A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.
— O, ask me, sir.
— A hard one, sir.
— This is the riddle, Stephen said.

The cock crew,
The sky was blue:
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for this poor soul
To go to heaven.
What is that?

(the punctuation is tricky because one speaker supplies three consecutive paragraphs)

the riddle is almost word for word from PW Joyce: [etext]
"Riddle me, riddle me right: What did I see last night? The wind blew, The cock crew, The bells of heaven Struck eleven 'Tis time for my poor sowl to go to heaven. Answer: the fox burying his mother under a holly tree."

'my poor sowl' hints it's the mother speaking

SD's substitution of blue sky for blowing wind, and omission of 'last night', makes it less spooky-- 11am not pm.

— What, sir?
— Again, sir. We didn't hear.


they're not sure they heard correctly

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane said:
— What is it, sir? We give it up.
Stephen, his throat itching, answered:
— The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.
He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay.


'itching throat' normally implies thirsty, but here it could mean eager to speak, or nervous about speaking. he exorcises it by laughing. (cf? "A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's cheek". SD is almost as young as the boys)

cf "the fox burying his mother under a holly tree" [etext]
(hollybush and hollytree are equally common)

a sort of ghoststory, it shows SD to be still an awkward boy himself, quoting folk nonsense.
the fox-image (SD's self-image?) will be expanded to "A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped."

A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:
— Hockey!
They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their boots and tongues. 

 
"lumberroom" = for storage of furniture, etc [cite]


Delaney: [64]
Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook. His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail's bed.
He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.


reminiscent of little SD in PoA1
schemata say Sargent = Pisistratus, Nestor's son, Telemachus's friend
'dateshaped' is a real descriptor, but sometimes used for turds
"snail's bed" is unique and literally meaningless
'sums' indicates SD teaches some math as well as history and literature
'blind loop' is a technical term for describing bad handwriting, where a loop that's supposed to be open is accidentally closed [cite] (but also an intestinal obstruction)

Delaney: [65]
— Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to you, sir.
Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.


'edges' to avoid ink smears? 'futility' because no matter how hard Sargent tries, he'll never be able to compete???

why did Deasy divide their labor this way? was he rechecking a copybook that SD had accepted? or was it just a question of timing, that Deasy had set the original lesson and would have checked the repeat assignment except that the timing meant SD would be available first?

>

mysteries:

[DD 00:25-02:58]


[IM 08:14-10:24]

[LV1 07:55-09:53]

[LV2 06:09-07:45]


nestor: 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36


Saturday, March 22, 2014

Page 26 (2.64-97) "Weep... gaily:"


editions: [1922] [html] [arch] [$2] [$4]
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Delaney: [61] [62] [63] Useen: [11] [11b] [12] [13] [14] [map] [*]
Delaney: [60]

<
Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more
    For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
    Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor...


LIHsihdus [etext]

the drowned-man motif has progressed from Mulligan's heroism (preventing) to the corpse in the bay (anticipated) to the lost friend (unrecovered). cf Schroedinger's cat?

Delaney: [61]
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds.

"movement" (the change from possible to actual)


the Siamese man's name was Chown, and he accompanied JAJ on an outing to Tours [Costello]. a potential future Ho Chi Minh?

FW 8.31-33 "This is the jinnies with their legahorns feinting to read in their handmade's book of stralegy while making their war undisides the Willingdone."

"he... my"

"sheltered from the sin of Paris... in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld" ie, lust? cf boys' snickering

"A dragon's scaly folds" (Wm Morris)
dragonscaly

Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.

"It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things." [Aristotle]

SD is remembering his own epiphany, reading Aristotle?


Delaney: [62]
Talbot repeated:
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
    Through the dear might...

— Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything.
— What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.
His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just remembered.


SD perpetrates a sympathetic fraud?

Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven on the church's looms. Ay.

cf milkmaid's uneager hand?
Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.
My father gave me seeds to sow.
(unspoken)
this riddle may go back to c1000AD
    Riddle me, riddle me, Randy Row,
    My father gave me some seed to sow;
    The seeds were black, the ground was white,
    Riddle me that against Saturday night.

Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel.
— Have I heard all? Stephen asked.
— Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.
— Half day, sir. Thursday.


SD left the Tower between 8:30 and 9, and probably took a halfhour to walk to the school, so these lessons started no earlier than 9am. So does one hour = a half day???

Delaney: [63]
— Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.
They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily:


>

mysteries:

[DD 02:11-05:07]
[DD 00:00-00:26]


[IM 05:14-08:14]

[LV1 05:14-07:55]

[LV2 04:04-06:09]


nestor: 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36


Friday, March 21, 2014

Page 25 (2.28-63) "at his classmates... text:"


editions: [1922] [html] [arch] [$2] [$4]
notes: [Th] [G&S] [Dent] [wbks] [rw] [images] [hyper]
Delaney: [58] [59] [60] Useen: [9] [10] [map] [*]
Delaney: [57]

<
at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.


"silly glee in profile" recalls Mulligan
the 'rule' SD lacks must include all enforcing of conventions?
if the boys are really 14yo, cowardly SD may be terrified of them

— Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, what is a pier.

surprising, that he's standing that close, and that he makes physical contact (the Linati schema warns "Telemachus doesn't yet bear a body"). he seems afraid to touch directly.

— A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A kind of bridge. Kingstown pier, sir.

Kingstown pier is highly atypical, not a platform on supporting pillars but a pair of half-mile granite walls almost-enclosing an artificial harbor.


Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he watched their faces. Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle.

"back bench" we're never told how many boys, how old, how seated. if they're 14 their voices have already mostly changed,

(Somehow, for these Protestant boys, any mention of this pier brings along primarily associations of sex. During the day it was enjoyed by families, but at night, mosly unlit, it became a place for secret rendezvous...?)

SD envies their freedom from Catholic repression?

Delaney: [58]
— Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge. The words troubled their gaze.
— How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.
For Haines's chapbook. No-one here to hear.


(This is so banal I can't believe the boys would be confused, nor would SD bother to repeat it later. Armstrong has already compared piers with bridges, a much less obvious insight. Is the point that SD is not at his best here, and can't distinguish inspiration from cliche?)
maybe JAJ intends to contrast BM's Celtic animism with British literalism?


Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.

"wild drink" (cf "wild Irish" above)
"his mind" = Haines (or BM?)
"they" all the Irish? or the boys here? (making SD another clement master)
England's pawnshop, because ownership is a legal fiction?

Delaney: [59]
Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind.

Schrödinger's cat didn't get named until 1935. SD seems to realise it's empty philosophising

Delaney: [60]
— Tell us a story, sir.
— Oh, do, sir. A ghoststory.


They know there's only a few minutes to go before hockey.

has he told them stories before? if he's haunted by his mother and the Church, what sort of ghoststory might he improvise? wouldn't Deasy find it inappropriate? (he learned one at Clongowes: PoA1)

— Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book.
Weep no more, Comyn said.


a weird way to ask where they stopped last time with their (regular?) teacher, presumably Deasy. SD trusts the boys to tell him, and Deasy trusts them to work it out without any tracking system...?

the gorescarred book was history, but maybe just a minimal timeline. this is some literary anthology, implausibly difficult for these young-sounding boys. they're jumping back in at the 165th line of Milton's poem.

— Go on then, Talbot.
— And the story, sir?
— After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.
A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:


why "swarthy"? (middle eastern ancestry? unclean? eg) he's got nimble fingers but is awkward reciting

'breastwork' suggests the students are at war with SD

(this can't be a feeble attempt at cheating, because SD watches him do it)
were they expected to memorise the whole poem?? (these boys, so literalminded they couldn't make the 'disappointed' leap???)

>

mysteries:

[DD 03:00-04:40]
[DD 00:00-02:11]


[IM 02:23-05:14]

[LV1 02:34-05:14]

[LV2 01:57-04:04]


nestor: 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36


Thursday, March 20, 2014

Page 24 (2.1-27) "You, Cochrane... looked round"


editions: [1922] [html] [arch] [$2] [$4]
notes: [Th] [G&S] [Dent] [wbks] [rw] [images] [hyper]
Delaney: [54] [55] [56] [57] Useen: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [8] [map] [*]

<
Delaney: [54]
— You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
— Tarentum, sir.
— Very good. Well?
— There was a battle, sir.
— Very good. Where?


SD knows at least some of the boys' names (after at least 3 weeks)
he's drilling them in the barest facts of Roman history, names and dates and places that will never mean anything to them (except maybe the few who continue to university).
they consistently call him 'sir'
Ellmann seems to have thought they were c14yo, but they're so timid (unphysical, bodyless?) they sound much younger
at Clongowes the Jesuit teachers used team-competition to motivate the boys [PoA1]

The boy's blank face asked the blank window.

(this strikes me a bit as JAJ showing off, shaping the text to fit a nice phrase he had saved up)

Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then?

SD is improvising phrases to himself, offering next to nothing to his students, even insensitive to their needs. it's just an hour since we saw him with Haines and BM, so the issues they raised are likely still occupying his attention (history is to blame?).


the battle was (in some way)
humanity's impatient excessive soaring 'memory' falsified it
as it falsifies everything (all space and time?)

(why "hear"?)

Delaney: [55]

— I forget the place, sir. 279 B.C.
— Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.
— Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.


children's textbooks probably would have said 'lost' not the less formal "done for"

That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.

SD sneers at phrases that are memorable because they're dull and easy-- he's pursuing an arduous enigmatic manner

(composition of place, first, then universalisation)

"spear... ear"?

SD is no one's general, yet? or just these boys, barely?

Delaney: [56]

— You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?

beheaded in battle in Argos after being ignominiously stunned by a tile thrown by an old woman

SD's method of teaching is to pick a boy and ask a simple question or three

— End of Pyrrhus, sir?
— I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
— Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?


this phrasing sounds intentionally humiliating

A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissues of his lips. A sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico Road, Dalkey.
why does he curl them? so they're easier to sneak?

use of "at whiles" peaked during J's youth

"lips... breath" (is SD standing this close, or just imagining standing this close?)

Vico Road in 1901 census
Ellmann claims Armstrong is based on Cecil Wright (12yo in 1901, 22 in 1911) and Clifford Ferguson (ditto 1901), ie 14 or 15 in 1904!

SD himself is an oldest son, but has thrown off all the roles that would have made his parents proud

the British navy, cf Haines

both Delaney and Donnelly say VIGHco

since he's IN Dalkey, the phrase "Vico Road, Dalkey" is probably SD's impersonation of the parents' proud boasting


Delaney: [57]

— Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.
All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round


>
mysteries: how old/how many


[DD 00:00-03:01]


[IM 00:04-02:23]

[LV1 00:27-02:34]


[LV2 00:15-01:57]



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