Ep. 49 – O, My Dimber Wapping Dell

Irish Travellers’ decorated caravan, 1954, National Library of Ireland archive

White thy fambles, Red thy gan!

Wait, what?

Find out what this phrase and much more means in this episode as we continue our discussion of “Proteus,” the third episode in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Topics covered in this show include: what Stephen means by “red Egyptians,” background on the Romani and Irish Travellers, Stephen’s class insecurity, Terry Pratchett’s Mort, strolling morts more generally, the distinct language of Romani and the Travellers,  The Our Father in Shelta, the secret language of thieves in 17th c. England, strolling morts, The Rogue’s Delight, she-fiends, bawd pimps, whores, an example of too-polite annotations, Stephen’s morose delectation, Thomas Aquinas’ nicknames, and Stephen’s realization that all words are his comrades.

Ep. 39 – C’est le pigeon, Joseph.

La Vie de Jésus, by Léo Taxil

Stephen Dedalus learns the value of gentlemanly blasphemy in this episode of Blooms & Barnacles. Our hero evades the nets of his oppressors while recalling a conversation with a friend in Paris. Topics include the changing face of Ringsend, the Pigeonhouse, Stephen’s epiphanies and the Epiphany, Dermot speaking French, what Jules Michelet doesn’t know about women, absinthe, the elaborate blasphemies of Leo Taxil’s pornographic pope period, Baphomet, the freemasons, and the greatest trick ever played on the Catholic Church (that might be overstating it, but it’s a fun story).

Ep. 37 – Who is this Dan Occam fellow, anyway?

William of Ockham

Dermot and Kelly tickle your brain with Stephen Dedalus’ thoughts on the Eucharist, William of Occam, hypostasis, consubstantiation, transubstantiation… we’ve got it all! Other major philosophical queries discussed include: How can so much bread and wine all become Christ’s body and blood. Does Stephen really understand hypostasis. When does soup become soup? Is it immoral to impersonate a priest as long as you don’t hear someone’s confession?

Ep. 35 – The Hundredheaded Rabble

Joachim of Fiore

Join Kelly and Dermot for a story about James Joyce’s youthful rebellion against the literary establishment of Dublin, his obsession with the apocalyptic predictions of a 12th century monk, a tale of psychic horror by W.B. Yeats, Jonathan Swift and Dublin’s oldest public library. It’s a jam-packed episode! The paragraph discussed in this episode can be found on p. 39-40 of the 1990 Vintage International edition of Ulysses.

Bonus: Dermot interviews Kelly about completing her blog series about “Proteus.” Check out those blog posts here.

Double Bonus: The difference between Elisha and Elijah from Chuck Knows Church.

Decoding Dedalus: God Becomes Featherbed Mountain

This is a post in a series called Decoding Dedalus where I take a passage of Ulysses and  break it down line by line.

The line below comes from “Proteus,” the third episode of Ulysses. It appears on page p. 50 in my copy (1990 Vintage International). We’ll be looking at the line that begins “God becomes…” and ends “…featherbed mountain.”

God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. 

This sentence is a riddle for us, Stephen’s phantom students.

Early in “Proteus,” Stephen thinks, “Signature of all things I am here to read,” and as the episode closes, Stephen is still deciphering these signatures. All of the items in this list are, at least theoretically, signs that might appear to Stephen on the seashore. The question is, can we (or Stephen) interpret these signs? This sentence shows a progression of concepts shifting and metamorphosing into one another, staying true to the slippery, protean nature of the shore. Where does the land end and the sea begin? It’s all a matter of perspective depending on ever-changing and overlapping forms – the sand, the water, the tides that join them, all existing on a continuum, nacheinander and nebeneinander. 

How does God transform into a featherbed mountain, anyway?

Ep. 31 – Contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality

The Annunciation, Girolamo da Santacroce, c. 1540

Let’s have fun with consubstantiality! Kelly and Dermot untangle Stephen Dedalus’ thoughts on the dual nature of God the Father and God the Son, the Nicene Creed, the difference between being made and being begotten, the death of Arius, seahorses, a shocking fact about the Star Wars cantina and an even more shocking fact about the symbolism of doves.

Ep. 27 – Nacheinander and Nebeneinander

“Bishop George Berkeley,” John Smybert, c. 1727

Real talk: why are there no seagulls on Sandymount Strand on Bloomsday? Have we stumbled onto a historical seagull-based conspiracy? Stay tuned to find out! Additionally, we’ll also continue discussing how Stephen’s walk on the beach is influenced by Berkeleyan idealism, Stephen’s perception of space and time, how blind people perceive the world and the Demiurg

Ep. 21 – Croppies Lie Down

This week, Kelly and Dermot explain the nightmarish history tucked into Stephen’s terse rebuttal of Mr. Deasy’s weak grasp of Irish history. The passage covered can be found on p. 31 of Kelly’s edition of Ulysses (1990 Vintage International). Topics covered include the history of the Orange Order, the Battle of the Diamond, the Planters’ Covenant, the power of copyright law over sectarianism, and how all these issues still affect us today.

Ep. 20 – Big Words Which Make Us So Unhappy

History is the art of Nestor, so let’s immerse ourselves in the nightmare of history, at least the bits covered on  p. 31 of Ulysses. Learn about Stephen’s hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.  Mr. Deasy tries to teach Stephen a bit of history, but (spoiler alert) he doesn’t know much about history. Topics covered include Daniel O’Connell, the Orange lodges, the Famine and the Fenians.  This episode covers some heavy stuff, but learning new things will make you feel like the woman in this picture.

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, De Anima

I am absolutely indebted to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the book Allwisest Stagyrite: Joyce’s Quotations from Aristotle by University College Dublin professor Fran O’Rourke for the contents of this essay.

In keeping with Catholic tradition, I must open this post with a confession of guilt: I’ve avoided writing about Aristotle as much as possible on this blog because I really don’t understand him. I’ve been laboring away the last few months fully aware that I purposely skipped over the following sweet, juicy chunks of philosophy on page 25 of “Nestor” because not only did I have no idea what they meant, but I had no desire to do the research to find out:

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

I thought I got away with it, too. No one emailed me to ask why I skipped over that “form of forms” bit, so I thought my soul was free of the weight of guilt brought on by my own neglect.

But then, I came across this passage on page 44 of “Proteus”: