[Tobacco in James Joyce's Ulysses]

The tobacco motif recurs a little heavyhandedly in the Lotus-eaters episode (considering Bloom doesn't smoke), along with tea, as popular Dublin-1904 narcotics. Thruout the book, it's asked for and given as a token of community.

In episode 1, Haines shares his cigarettes and lighter with Stephen


"Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it. -- Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette. Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his hands... Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke... Haines sat down on a stone, smoking." (1.)

Episode 2 significantly omits references to tobacco. In episode 3, SD remembers Kevin Egan rolling his own

"Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white... The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose tobacco shreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner." (3.)

"Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged smoking a coiled pipe." (4.)


Lotus-eaters:

"By Brady's cottages a boy for the skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won't grow. O let him! His life isn't such a bed of roses."

"Curious the life of drifting cabbies: all weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio e non. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable."

"Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic."


"Mat Dillon's long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really." (6.)

 
"-- Seems to be, J.J. O'Molloy said, taking out a cigarette case in murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most matches? THE CALUMET OF PEACE He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J.J. O'Molloy opened his case again and offered it. -- Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself... He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with quick grace, said: -- Silence for my brandnew riddle! ...-- My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false construction on my words...  Pause. J.J. O'Molloy took out his cigarette case. False lull. Something quite ordinary. Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar...  Stephen... took a cigarette from the case. J.J. O'Molloy offered his case to Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying: -- Muchibus thankibus... -- No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarette case aside... His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes." (7.)

"Smells of men. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarette smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment." (8.)

(Scylla, nothing)

"Father Conmee saw a turfbarge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty straw seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above him. It was idyllic... Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips... One of them mots that do be in the packets of fags Stoer smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of him for one time he found out." (10.)

"Bloowho went by by Moulang's pipes... Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr Dedalus brought pouch and pipe... He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute... Mr Dedalus, famous fighter, laid by his dry filled pipe... -- The tuner was in today, Miss Douce replied, tuning it for the smoking concert... Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all... Where's my pipe, by the way? He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe... Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand... Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting, touched the obedient keys... Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that cooed a moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar, replying... -- Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning, with fetched pipe..." (11.)

Bloom accepts a free cigar in Cyclops:

"So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he wouldn't and he couldn't and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said well he'd just take a cigar. Gob, he's a prudent member and no mistake. -- Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe... And Bloom, of course, with his knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face... Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar." (12.)

"But he was undeniably handsome... and also the nice perfume of those good cigarettes...  O, and will you ever forget the evening she dressed up in her father's suit and hat and the burned cork moustache and walked down Tritonville road, smoking a cigarette... so they could put that in their pipe and smoke it." (13.)


"the head of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle... And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you..." (14.)

"(Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted doorways, in window embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour of the sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.) THE WREATHS Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin... The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay... ZOE... Have you a swaggerroot? BLOOM... Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. (Lewdly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed. ZOE Go on. Make a stump speech out of it. BLOOM... Sir Walter Raleigh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food... Bloom's bodyguard distribute... expensive Henry Clay cigars... BLOOM (In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band... ZOE Who has a fag as I'm here? LYNCH (Tossing a cigarette on to the table.) Here. ZOE (Her head perched aside in mock pride.) Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady? (She stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits... Henry Flower... carries... a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female head... BELLO... And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette... (Squats with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg... He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear.) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray? ...(He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss... STEPHEN... Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from the sofa to the table... A cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it.) Wonder. Parlour magic. Married. Hm. (He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.) LYNCH (Watching him.) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer... (The cigarette slips from Stephen's fingers. Bloom picks it up and throws it in the grate.) BLOOM Don't smoke." (15.)

"...it wouldn't occasion me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior object... there was Colonel Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco" (16.)

"...pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan... an emerald ashtray containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two discoloured ends of cigarettes... Soll und Haben by Gustav Freytag (black boards, Gothic characters, cigarette coupon bookmark at p.24)... a pair of outsize ladies' drawers of India mull, cut on generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti's Turkish cigarettes" (17.)

"I wish hed even smoke a pipe like father to get the smell of a man... lighting their pipes for them everytime they went out... smoking their cigarettes through their nose I smelt it off her dress... we can have music and cigarettes" (18.)