003 ... in which I continue reading Ulysses one page per day one day at a time, and chronicle my reading by quoting my favorite sentence and word from each page. Each post chronicles five days of reading.
DAY 11, pg 11
A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning.
Page 11 is the funniest and perhaps most gnostic page, too, I've read so far here, early on. If anyone could direct me to an analysis of gnosticism in Ulysses I'd be much obliged. The words "milk" and "secret" appear numerous times on page 11. The word "hising" appears for the first of two times it will appear in Ulysses according to the Ulysses Concordance, but I've yet to find what the word means. Is it an early instance of Joyce inventing a new word?
f.w. = dewsilky, but on pg 11 I must also include an honorable mention f.w.: prepuces. I really really like this word "prepuces".
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| Godless Florin, 1849 |
Well, it’s seven mornings a pint at twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling.
That dazzling bit of dialogue from the milkwoman replying to Haines about the bill for the milk just leapt off the page—and it was a page with lots of leapers.
f.w = Gaelic ... this was the first pag in which a single word didn't leap at me like the sentences, so I had to search and search and sort of "settle" on "Gaelic," a beautiful word nonetheless.
DAY 13; pg 13
Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke: —I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.
—No, Haines, I shall make a collection of your sayings.
f.w. = agenbite
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DAY 14; pg 14
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his own, saying resignedly:
—Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
Hmmm. Might Mulligan be being rather blasphemous?
f.w. = handkerchief — a word you no longer hear much these days. It beat out "snotrag" by a nose.
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DAY 15; pg 15
He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
Fun page. Besides Shakespeare, Thomas Aquinas and Oscar Wilde are also mentioned. The sentence above, in fact, is Buck Mulligan poking fun at the paradoxical witticisms of Wilde. I almost picked Wait till I have a few pints in me first as my favorite sentence, because, in that simple line — in the words "in me" — I can hear that Irish voice speaking loud and clear.
f.w. = stolewise
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Reading Ulysses Index
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