Ulysses - The Cambridge Centenary
The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes
Edited by Catherine Flynn
Cambridge University Press - £45.00
O, rocks! She said. Tell us in plain words.
Ulysses extraordinary power to articulate early twentieth-century experience was attested to by writers who have become known, like Joyce, as modernists. T. S. Eliot wrote of the novel as ''the most important expression which this present age has found,'' as a ''book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape.''
That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of language it is. The thoughts. Solemn.
Accompanied by a number of maps and illustrations, while compiled by a menagerie of very well respected contributors (most of whom are Professors or Senior Lecturers at a number of universities from around the world), this more than lavish and weighty tomb of a book conveys everything one could possibly wish for from a favourite work – be it literature or a painting or whatever.
To be sure, As Catherine Flynn states at the very outset of the Introduction: ''The experience of struggling through Ulysses for the first time is something unusual in our cultural landscape where so much is consumable, bite-sized, and bingeable. Wrestling with and puzzling through Joyce's strange book offers readers the opportunity to stretch their minds and expand their imaginations, and so to encounter who they are in dynamic ways. In this volume, an introductory essay prefaces each of the episodes of Ulysses but these can be saved to read after the novel. Ulysses's literary allusions, as well as its foreign language phrases and historical references, are explained in the footnotes, which draw from and build upon earlier works of annotation. To produce a complete elucidation of the novel and all of its allusions and references, however, is not just impossible but undesirable, as it it would put mere explanation in the places of experience and bypass the rich and suggestive ambiguities of the text. To produce a compete explanation is to take away the reason to read Ulysses in the first place.''
Flynn is spot-on in relation to ''the rich and suggestive ambiguities of the text.''
This is what surely accounts for a great deal of Ulysses longevity and attraction in the first place. To over analyse, would indeed be to severely, as well as unfortunately, miss the point; which, for all miss-opportunistic intents and rancid, class induced purposes, is what appears to have taken place with regards Virginia Woolf, who (unsurprisingly) wrote of it ''with distaste in her diary: ''an illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self-taught working man, & we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating […].''
''Woolf's labelling of Joyce as ''self-taught'' says less about Joyce, who in fact had a degree in modern languages, and more about Ulysses, a novel that ransacks existing literature'' (my italics).
It might further be argued that Woolf's ''ultimately nauseating'' comments say far more about her, than they do James Joyce.
And this is just one aspect which accounts for Ulysses - The Cambridge Centenary, The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes, being as perhaps equally readable, enjoyable and inflammatory as the original book itself.
Moreover, so far as pure literary criticism is concerned, the following, written by Scarlett Baron, demonstrates the deft (and high-octane to say the least) consideration that can be found throughout in abundance:
''As the tenth in the book's series of eighteen episodes, ''Wandering Rocks'' is often regarded as a pivot between the relatively comprehensible prose of the first half of Ulysses and the ever more radical experimentation of the second. Joyce too seems to have regarded it as occupying a central position: the words ''End of First Part of 'Ulysses''' appear at the foot of his fair-copy manuscript of the ninth, or ''Seylla and Charybdis,'' episode. Yet ''Wandering Rocks' presents more of a challenging than this account of its halfway house position might suggest. Though the formal and stylistic novelties of ''Aeolus'' and ''Seylla and Charybdis'' may be so defamiliarizing to the reader so as to make ''Wandering Rocks'' seem a place of respite, the apparent ''plainness'' of its ''predominantly homogenous dead-pan style'' conceals dramatic infringements of the book's previously established narrative norms'' (10. 'Wandering Rocks').
Similarly, the following by Tim Conley, which opens with the following: ''Eumaeus'' is a mystery, in several senses of the word. Full of doubtful reports and people, it is a late-night foray into the world of criminals, adventurers, and down-and-outs. Just as Homer's hero conceals his identity from his faithful swineherd, the namesake of this chapter, and fabricates a history for himself, Joyce's narrative offers a blend of tall tales and coy evasions. The swineherd, scorned by and scornful of the suitors, gives the stranger food and shelter, but is not entirely duped by the fantastical stories given him in return: don't try to charm me now, don't spellbind me with your lies! Never for that will I respect you, treat you kindly. Their encounter is a blend of hospitality and parrying, generosity and wariness […]. First-time readers of the novel are likely to judge the episode of a mystery, too, in as much as it may seem such an anticlimax. After all, they have waited hundreds of pages to see Bloom and Stephen actually meet, and have probably entertained some expectations for that event, only to find the encounter's details obfuscated when potentially interesting, and all too clear when not […]'' (16. 'Eumaeus').
As it says on the very back of the cover: ''James Joyce's Ulysses is considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. This new edition – published to celebrate the book's first publication – helps readers to understand the pleasures of this monumental work and to grapple with its challenges.
Copiously equipped with maps, photographs, and explanatory footnotes, it provides a vivid and illuminating context for the experiences of Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Bloom, as well as Joyce's many other Dublin characters, on June 16, 1904. Featuring a facsimile of the historic 1922 Shakespeare and Company text, this version includes Joyce's own errata as well as references to amendments made in later editions. Each of the eighteen chapters of Ulysses is introduced by a leading Joyce scholar. These richly informative pieces discuss the novel's plot and allusions, while exploring crucial questions that have puzzled and tantalized readers over the last hundred years.''
At 942 pages (excluding Illustrations, Maps, Contributors, Preface, Chronology of Joyce's Life, Abbreviations, A Note on Annotations, Guide for Readers, Further Reading and Index of Recurrent Characters), it might warrant pointing out that this beautifully put together and very lavish book is rather large – quite simply because of the foray and the density of what actually took place on June 16, 1904.
Other than that, this is an astonishing piece of work and editing by Catherine Flynn.
It is a landmark in and of itself, which will no doubt, hold many a place of monumental pride upon any Joycean bookshelf.
David Marx
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