Lunar Weaving

James Joyce's Ulysses doesn't have very much in the way of plot, but it's certainly full of allusions.  When I read it, I think I placed more importance on figuring out the allusions than figuring out what was happening.  While writing my final paper for the class I had on it, I discovered something else interesting.

In the penultimate chapter, Molly is compared to the moon.  Among other things, the narrator mentions "her satellitic dependence:  her luminary reflection:  her constancy under all her phrases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning."  Molly is set up to be a figure who - in some respects - controls time.

Molly's parallel in The Odyssey - Penelope - also controls time in a way.  She delays her suitors by weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus' father Laertes.  They agree to wait until she's finished, but she unweaves her work at the end of the day, which extends the completion for a few years.

So both Molly and Penelope are presented as figures who aren't under the strict progression of time.  Penelope is able to delay the inevitable by unweaving her shroud, and Molly is described as constant "under all her phases."  Furthermore, in the section from her perspective, specific times are not seen.  Things are relative or vaguely described.  Where both Bloom and Stephen would probably be very specific about times, Molly just says "it was 1/4 after 3."

But the connexions between Molly and Penelope do not end there.  Also significant is that they are women, which means that they can weave.  The weaving is seen literally in the case of Penelope's weaving the shroud, but the weaving is also a metaphor for creating and sustaining life.  "As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image.  ...  the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time."

Molly resembles Penelope through her distance from time and her ability as a woman to metaphorically weave and create life.

Recursive and Allusive Fathers and Sons

I finally started re-reading Hamlet this week.  I've been meaning to get to it for a couple of months since Hamlet plays a big rôle in a chapter of Ulysses, which I just had a class on.  I had a notion of reading both The Odyssey and Hamlet so that it would be easier to understand what was going on in Ulysses (allusion-wise), but I made it through only The Odyssey.  So now since school's over, I decided to re-read Hamlet.  The last time I read the whole thing (which was also the first time I read the whole thing) was the summer in between my sophomore and junior years of high school, which was about five years ago.  (I was supposed to have read the whole thing in my introductory English class during my freshman year of university, but I got the act and scene numbers mixed up and didn't read as much as I should have, and I never felt bad enough to go back and finish it.)

Before I actually got to start the play, I read all of the introductory material in the front of the book.  That's where I learned that Hamnet Shakespeare - Shakespeare's son whose death in some way inspired Hamlet - was born on 2 February.  Things clicked to-gether in my brain, and I actually had to stop reading because I got so excited about this.

James Joyce's birthday is 2 February.  Supposedly, so is Stephen Dedalus' - one of the main characters in Ulysses.  But what was really interesting about learning this was the whole author/book and father/son relationship combining.

In the Hamlet-centric chapter of Ulysses, Mr Best makes a pun about Hamlet and Shakespeare in French.  Hamlet is "un pièce du Shakespeare."  The play is a piece of Shakespeare in the same way that Hamnet is a piece of Shakespeare.  This involves the ideas of consubstantiality between father and son and metempsychosis (the transmigration of souls) that are central to Ulysses.  (And which I wrote my final paper about.)  Different father/son relationships are constituted by a variety of means:

• Leopold Bloom and Rudy (actual father and son) - like Hamnet, Rudy died
• Simon Dedalus and Stephen (actual father and son) - a big deal is made of their eyes' being the same, which is one of the main examples of father/son consubstantiality
• Bloom and Stephen - Bloom sort of adopts Stephen as a replacement son for Rudy; they are also described in the same way by a cabman; and Ulysses incorporates their rôles as Odysseus (Bloom) and Telemachus (Stephen) - a relationship which also resembles King Hamlet and Prince Hamlet in terms of heredity and royalty
• Paddy Dignam and Paddy Dignam (actual father and son) - this also plays with the Hamlet paradigm as both father and son have the same name and the elder of the pair dies shortly before the main action

In the paper I wrote for my class, I had intended to tie all of this father/son, consubstantiality, and metempsychosis stuff back to literature itself, but it got confusing and I never attempted it.  But from the relationship among Shakespeare, Hamnet, and Hamlet, one can see that literature acts as either a substitute or a continuation of father/son relationships.  This same type of idea is presented in The Divine Comedy, which Ulysses has many allusions to.  Virgil the poet acts as a guide to Dante.  Depending on how one looks at it, Dante could be guided by an actual person - a mentor - or he could be guided by literature itself.  Ulysses has that same idea:  people and literature can play similar rôles.

But learning that Joyce's birthday was the same as Hamnet's takes this all a step further.  Shakespeare's creation of Hamlet to - in a way - replace Hamnet is mirrored by Joyce's creation of Ulysses.  Shakespeare creates his progeny in literature because his real son has died, and then Joyce - who shares Hamnet's birthday - writes about father/son relationships and their replacement in literature.

This is the type of recursive and allusive paradigm that makes Ulysses both great fun to read and really frustrating.

Sherlock Holmes as Actor/Author

One of the stories I had to read in my Sherlock Holmes class this past semester was "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier."  It's unique in that it's one of the few stories written from Holmes' perspective (I believe the only other one from his perspective is "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane").  But between Holmes' perspective and specific traits that the characters had, I got the feeling that Holmes had made up the story.*

At the very beginning, he writes that "for a long time [Watson] has worried me to write an experience of my own" and "'Try it yourself, Holmes!' he has retorted."  He then explains that "Watson has no note of it [this adventure] in his collection."  It's also significant that Watson is not present in the story.

Even from the very beginning of the Holmes canon, Holmes is rather dismissive of Watson's accounts of their adventures (though this aversion does seem to lessen to some degree as the stories progress).  He calls them too romantic and chastises Watson for not focusing on the useful parts - parts that could help other detectives.  As with everything else, Holmes takes a very didactic view of literature; in "A Study in Scarlet," Watson explains that Holmes "would acquire no knowledge which did not bear upon his object.  Therefore all the knowledge which he possessed was such as would be useful to him."  "A Study in Scarlet" also mentions Holmes' prodigious knowledge of sensational fiction.

Holmes' previous statements regarding literature make it hard for me to believe that he wrote the story purely to chronicle his adventure.  There has to be some pragmatic purpose for it.  While "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier" could be useful to other detectives in the same way that sensationalist fiction is to Holmes, I don't think that that's the primary purpose.

The two soldiers in the story - Dodd and Godfrey - resemble Holmes and Watson so closely that I don't believe it's a mere coincidence.  Godfrey - like Watson - was shot during the war and had to return to England.  Dodd - like Holmes - has an intense loyalty to his friend.  At the beginning of the story, Holmes writes, "It was in January, 1903, just after the conclusion of the Boer War, that I had my visit from Mr. James M. Dodd, a big, fresh, sunburned, upstanding Briton.  The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association.  I was alone."  Here, Holmes resembles Dodd (or Dodd resembles Holmes) more specifically:  they are both lacking their friends.  I also find Holmes' remark "I was alone" interesting.  He states that he had a visit from Mr. Dodd but also that he is alone.  If Holmes did make up this story, and Dodd is purely a caricature of him, then he is alone... with himself.

I think Holmes has two purposes in making up this adventure and passing it off as true.  First, it's an-other way that he can practise his acting.  There are multiple instances in the Holmes stories where Holmes uses disguises to fool people into thinking that he's someone he isn't.  I think manufacturing this story is just an-other facet of that.  Instead of using wigs and different clothes, he's using words and playing on emotions.

Second, I think the story functions as a retribution of sorts aimed at Watson.  Holmes disguises his intense friendship for Watson in Dodd's intense friendship for Godfrey - who even goes so far as to confront Godfrey's father in order to find out what happened to Godfrey.  Couched in his adventure story, Holmes is telling Watson how strongly he feels about him and how Watson's marrying Mary Morstan feels like an abandonment.

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*(This is a stupid footnote that explains an obvious point but just to make it clear:) I realise that Holmes is fictional.  What I'm saying is that within the world that Doyle has created - one in which Holmes and Watson have adventures and then Watson chronicles them - Holmes has made up a story to resemble Watson's true accounts.