002 ... 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 6; pg 6
A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.
And today requires a second favorite sentence:
I remember only ideas and sensations.
Funny thing that second sentence—ideas and sensations, for me, elicit memories, but I rarely remember ideas and sensations, in and of themselves, per se.
f.w. = Laloutte's
Rolls off the tongue nicely. I remember a friend who once mentioned being drunk at a party where the partygoers were reading Finnegans Wake aloud, and just laughing uproariously over the language. Ulysses is likewise a novel to be read aloud.
The word "beastly" is plastered all over page six. I'm sure Joyce had a reason....
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| North Coast of the Dingle Peninsula, by Helene Brennan |
Day 7; pg 7
Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
So quotable, and but one example of Joyce's unmatched mastery of language. Perhaps only Shakespeare surpassed him?
f.w. = phantasmal
Day 8; Pg 8
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul.
Even though I know, in context, Stephen Dedalus is ruminating upon his late mother, that line, in my own life's context, elicited a visceral reaction when I read it. I suspect anyone who's stared into those "glazing eyes ... out of death" of one beloved, suddenly gone, likewise feels their soul shaken and bent. That sentence there is high and holy Art—but one example of the numinous universal power of Joyce, in particular, and of Literature, in general.
f.w. = ghostcandle
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Day 9; Pg 9
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling
its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck.
Pure poetry! This page requires mention of a runner-up sentence—
I am another now and yet the same.
Reminds me of the poet (forget whom) who wrote of the river — "you sound like you're moving / but you never leave".
f.w. = barbacans
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Day 10; Pg 10
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman’s wheedling voice:
—When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said.
f.w. = Dundrum
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Reading Ulysses index
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