Character from Nothingness: Bloom as Stereotyped Jew
Against dominant critical interpretations of ‘Cyclops’ – which focus on the stylistic innovation of the episode, embodied by Joyce’s use of passages interpolating the narrative text; or which analyse the content of the episode as a dialogue on the brand of political nationalism espoused by the citizen – I propose a perspective which restores the primacy of Bloom’s character, and emphasises the episode’s inflationary utilisation of the rhetoric of the early Church. In ‘Telemachus’, Stephen Dedalus proclaims, ‘I am servant of two masters […] The imperial British state […] and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.’ (U, 1.638-644). In ‘Cyclops’ Joyce once more works through the language of the early Church and its related debates as a means of undermining these twin authorities.
In his critical study of Ulysses, Hugh Kenner suggests a correlation between the passage which introduces the heresiarchs in ‘Telemachus’ and the interpolations which characterise ‘Cyclops’. Kenner posits that the shorter interpolations in ‘Telemachus’, such as Stephen’s initial interior utterance ‘Chrysostomos’, may be considered ‘notation for a brief movement of Stephen’s psyche’ (Kenner, 97). The longer interpolations in the episode, however, require a different
explanation. Kenner cites the passage beginning ‘The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s memory’, which references Photius, Arius, Valentine and Sabellius in turn (U, 1.650). He suggests that,
What has happened, as repeatedly in ‘Cyclops’, is that a once-potent phrase – ‘the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church’ – has been snatched up from the plane of banality where it made its entry […] and installed in a pocket of time outside the scene’s clock time, to generate a highly styled interpolation which (‘Zut! Nom de Dieu!’) is also parodic high style. And we have been charmed by the convention of the opening pages into supposing that this interruption is like ‘Chrysostomos’, a flick of the chameleon Stephen’s tongue, though it can’t have been. It exists alongside the narrative, with Stephen’s presence to excuse it. (Kenner, 98)
Thus Kenner argues that the passage in ‘Telemachus’ ought not to be read as Stephen
By the time he came to write ‘Cyclops’, according to Kenner’s view, Joyce retained the same manner of interpolations, but was content to do away with their justification: ‘In deciding not to justify the parodies by the presence of someone to whose mental workings they are congruent, Joyce confirmed the convention that Ulysses is from now on at the disposal of the Arranger, who is free to interpolate what he likes without a by-your-leave.’ (Kenner, 98).
This reading has for Kenner significant implications towards the understanding of Joyce’s novel. An appreciation of the similarities between the interpolations of ‘Cyclops’ and ‘Telemachus’ forces us to reread the earlier episodes of Ulysses: it suggests that even before ‘Wandering Rocks’ – the point at which Groden and many other critics identify a decisive stylistic shift – Ulysses was ‘fissured already, and the microplanes of its surfaces minutely canted’ (Kenner, 98). So according to Kenner we may read the introduction of the heresiarchs in ‘Telemachus’ as both a precursor to, and as the first instance of, Joyce’s extravagant extra-narrative deviations.
Yet despite the interpretive powers of Kenner’s argument, it remains unclear why the extended passage in ‘Telemachus’ ‘can’t have been’ entirely Stephen’s interior monologue. The interpolation is of a piece with ‘Chrysostomos’ in so far as both develop a patristic frame of reference: it is consistent that a character who thinks immediately of Saint John Chrysostom upon the sight of gold-pointed teeth will be able to readily summon other Church Fathers. More, as someone with an intimate knowledge of the early Church, who has himself turned away from organised religion, it is natural that Stephen – having stated, provoked by Haines, that as an
Irishman he is subject to a ‘Roman catholic and apostolic’ master – will turn in his thoughts towards early Church heresiarchs, who are those figures within the early Church who symbolise free-
thought and the possibility of rebellion.
The preoccupation with Mulligan in the passage on the heresiarchs seems clearly Stephen’s. Mulligan is named twice in the passage, and both times identified with mockery. Mulligan is also present in the only other extended interpolation in ‘Telemachus’: that is, the only other passage in the episode which seems to diverge from and divest itself of the body of the narrative; neither comprising speech, describing the actions of characters or the surrounds of the Martello tower and Dublin bay, involving Stephen explicitly remembering his past, nor reducible to a ‘brief movement of Stephen’s psyche’.58 This other extended interpolation emerges as Stephen views the elderly woman who has come to deliver the milk:
58 Beyond the question of interpolations in ‘Telemachus’ and their potential attribution to Stephen, it is worth noting that many of Stephen’s explicit recollections in the episode – whether carrying the boat of incense at Clongowes or witnessing his mother on her deathbed – are decidedly religious.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour. (U, 1.397-407)
Markedly similar in rhythm and tone to the passage a few pages later on the heresiarchs, the interpolation identifies Haines, an Englishman, as this milkmaid’s ‘conqueror’, and again posits Mulligan deleteriously as a ‘gay betrayer’. These consistencies allow us to read both interpolations as decisively Stephen’s, his own rhetorical flourishes rather than early interpositions of an external ‘Arranger’. Such passages from ‘Telemachus’ are still implicated by the interpolations in ‘Cyclops’, but they indicate an ambiguous area of exploration between character, narrative, religion, and state, rather than affirming a textual location strictly outside the confines of character.
Despite feeling that in the later episodes of the novel Joyce withdraws from the close characterisation of Bloom and Stephen, and replaces this with exuberant stylistic innovation, Kenner himself makes a movement back towards characterisation when he explains how these episodes harmonise with Bloom’s state of mind. Kenner writes that by ‘Cyclops’, ‘Stephen and Bloom, by now densely established as characters, are commencing their metamorphosis into types and portents. By the time they take cocoa in Bloom’s kitchen (“Ithaca”) and part in his back garden, it will be hard to say whether we are more conscious of their human substantiality or of their symbolic grandeur’ (Kenner, 101).59 At the same time, ‘Joyce has not forgotten his former criterion of fidelity to the rhythm of his characters’ thoughts’. Kenner notes how the apparent lack of
narrative cohesion and the divestment of character which occurs from ‘Sirens’ through to ‘Oxen of the Sun’ is mirrored in Bloom: his workday effectively ending in ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ when he accesses the Kilkenny People at the National Library, he has witnessed Blazes Boylan leaving for 7 Eccles Street in ‘Sirens’, and now has few plans and feels he cannot return to his home. If the narrative of Ulysses is in flux following ‘Wandering Rocks’, then this reflects in part Bloom’s own vacillations.
59 Kenner notes that in his initial planning for the episode, Joyce considered making Stephen a part of ‘Cyclops’, and that ‘the episode might revert to the book’s initial style, interior monologue and neutral narrative’ (Kenner, 98).
The only item left on Bloom’s agenda for the day – now that he has visited the post office and picked up Martha Clifford’s letter, bathed, attended Paddy Dignam’s funeral, discussed with councillor Nannetti the Keyes advertisement and followed this up at the library – is to meet with Martin Cunningham at Barney Kiernan’s pub, to go over the matter of Dignam’s insurance. This is the immediate purpose of the ‘Cyclops’ episode within the narrative of Ulysses. Yet as Kenner discerns, it is a purpose significantly hidden from the reader. Bloom must have agreed to meet Cunningham in ‘Hades’, either on the journey to or in the aftermath of Dignam’s funeral, but despite two oblique references in ‘Sirens’ to the impending meeting, it is not until mid-‘Cyclops’ that the nature of the meeting is explained:
As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet Martin Cunningham, don’t you see, about this insurance of poor Dignam’s. Martin asked me to go to the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn’t serve any notice of the assignment on the company at the time and nominally under the act the mortgagee can’t recover on the policy. (U, 12.760-764)
Bloom is speaking to Joe Hynes, who responds, ‘that’s a good one if old Shylock is landed’.60 The nameless narrator of the episode immediately takes up the narrative thread,
paraphrasing as Bloom provides more detail. Dignam evidently used his insurance as a security to loan money from a lender named Bridgeman, and with Dignam now dead and his debt unpaid, his insurance would therefore pass to the lender, leaving Dignam’s family with nothing. However, Cunningham has spotted a technicality – Dignam never served his company with notice of the deal with the lender – which appears to make the lender’s claim unenforcable, thereby securing the insurance money for Dignam’s wife.
‘Nameless’, irritated by the talk of Dignam’s insurance, rounds on Bloom, bringing up his involvement in an apparently disreputable Hungarian lottery scheme. Ironically, however, it is precisely Bloom’s handiness when it comes to matters of money which Martin Cunningham seeks. The implication is that Bloom will lead the negotiations between Dignam’s wife and the
moneylender, with Cunningham – along with his companions, Jack Power and Crofton (who appear in ‘Grace’ and in ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room respectively’ from Dubliners; while Power travels with Cunningham, Bloom, and Simon Dedalus in ‘Hades’ earlier in the novel) – seeming of the opinion that Bloom will possess the necessary subtlety and tact to make the best of a delicate situation.
60 Bloom at this point responds in turn to Hynes: ‘– Well, that’s a point, says Bloom, for the wife’s admirers. – Whose admirers? says Joe. – The wife’s advisers, I mean, says Bloom.’ (U, 12.767-769). This is one of several instances whereby a verbal slippage of Bloom’s introduces a sexual innuendo.
Through a wonderful process of exegesis, Kenner analyses why Bloom’s participation in this undertaking is elided within Joyce’s narrative (Kenner, 103). He notes that not only is Bloom’s planned meeting with Cunningham only briefly hinted at – whereas a fuller exposition would have given the novel a stronger narrative backbone – but more, the visit to the Dignam house does not become part of the text. Even when recounting his day in ‘Ithaca’ in response to Molly’s
‘catechetical interrogation’, Bloom makes no mention of the visit.61 Indeed, after ‘Cyclops’ – according to Joyce’s schema, and apparent from the depiction of time in the novel – a period of two or three hours passes before the action of ‘Nausicaa’ commences.62 It is by some distance the longest span of time missing from Joyce’s account of the day. It is during these hours that Bloom travels to the Dignam house with Cunningham, Power and Crofton, but while Bloom considers Dignam’s death four times in ‘Nausicaa’, and twice thinks of Mrs. Dignam – calling to mind her button nose, which is presumably indicative of his just having seen her – Kenner is right to assert that mention of this event is ‘absent’ from Bloom’s ruminations, apart from one phrase suggesting its atmosphere and his future intentions: ‘Houses of mourning so depressing because you never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must call to those Scottish Widows as I promised’ (U, 13.1226-1227).
It is Hynes’ brief reference to Shylock which indicates why Bloom himself elides the event from his thoughts, and effectively from the told story of his day. Joyce’s narrative is in this sense a product of Bloom’s preference, a product of the workings of his mind: narrative style and narrative selection again reflect character.63 Martin Cunningham is related to Shakespeare in ‘Hades’, when Bloom looks momentarily at his eyes and thinks, ‘Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare’s face. Always a good word to say.’ (U, 6.343-345). Thus the course of action which would lead Bloom to Dignam’s house – Cunningham’s cultivation of Bloom – is figured as Shakespeare creating Shylock. Bloom, who is unwilling by nature to be moulded, specifically intuits the readiness of others to assert upon him the stereotype of Jewish moneyman or moneylender, and just as intuitively, he rejects the association. While recovering for Dignam’s family the money by which they may live may be a noble act of selfless charity, Bloom neither looks forward nor takes any pride in it, because the assertion of a stereotype has taken away his agency as a ‘conscious rational’ human being.
61 These interrogations have become more frequent, ‘Ithaca’ notes, since the onset of Milly’s puberty, ‘9 months and 1 day ago’, 15 September 1903. Their effect has been to circumscribe Bloom’s ‘complete corporal liberty of action’ (U, 17.2288-2292).
62 According to Joyce’s second schema, ‘Cyclops’ takes place at 5 pm, ‘Nausicaa’ at 8 pm.
63 Though the psychology of Bloom and of the novel may be further explored if this hypothetical question is asked: whether an account of Bloom’s visit to the Dignam’s is written and then suppressed, or whether it is never so much as written. That is to say, is the narrative rejected from the outset, or is it maintained as a possibility and only rejected after the fact?
The Politics of Inflation
The point is that through what is written and unwritten, said and left unsaid in ‘Cyclops’, Joyce maintains a keen focus on the character of Bloom in what is a playfully but determinedly moral episode. And beyond recalling the religious and political matter of ‘Telemachus’ and subtly indicating Bloom’s private struggles with his Jewishness, Joyce once again uses the religious rhetoric of the early church to pull apart the authoritative language of church and state.
From absence, Bloom becomes the focus of ‘Cyclops’, even as the episode would seem to move away from him by replacing his inner monologue with the narration of ‘Nameless’.64 Bloom is conspicuous in the episode in part because he is no longer so conspicuous: we lose not only his train of thought, but also a sense of his body – otherwise so central to any conception of Bloom, frequently engaged in explicit bodily acts and always preoccupied with the physiological – as he becomes a mere voice among voices in Barney Kiernan’s pub. It is into this vacuum, amidst the relative darkness of the pub, and against its narrow conceptions – Nameless’s ribald and
entertaining but single-tracked pattern of speech, which tends to slight others and adduce to them selfish motives; and the citizen’s nationalist and racist ideology – that Joyce introduces his vast and varied interpolations.
They constitute a centrifugal rather than a centripetal force. Where Nameless works to develop a limited, doubting consensus within the confines of the pub – which even takes in Martin Cunningham who, in Bloom’s absence, despite initially asking for ‘Charity to the neighbour’, ultimately offers a toast only to ‘bless all here’, thereby excluding whomever is not present (U, 12.1665-1673) – the interpolations propel outwards and away from this centre. In his Discourse in the Novel, Mikhail Bakhtin opposes centripetal ‘unitary language’ with centrifugal ‘heteroglossia’. Centripetal ‘unitary language’ endeavours towards ‘guaranteeing a certain maximum of mutual understanding and crystalizing into a real, though still relative, unity’, whereas centrifugal ‘heteroglossia’ implicates ‘another’s speech in another’s language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way’ (Bakhtin, 270 and 324). And it is something of the same
movement which Joyce utilises in ‘Cyclops’, as the interpolations disrupt the unity of Nameless’s
64 The narrator of ‘Cyclops’ receives the title ‘Nameless One’ when he reappears in ‘Circe’, with a ‘featureless face’, as one of the jury who emerge from the fog to accuse Bloom (U, 15.1143-11444).
narration and of the citizen’s Irish nationalist rhetoric, implicating other avenues for thought and displaying other utilisations of language.65
In this sense the interpolations serve a moral function, allowing for a multiplicity of voices, and giving form to life beyond Barney Kiernan’s pub. They allow for the wandering of
consciousness which both Nameless and the citizen would apparently limit, and which we lose as readers when separated from Bloom’s roaming inner voice. As the interpolations draw upon and transgress specific literary genres – those of medieval romance literature, Biblical prose, and newspaper reportage – there is a link with ‘Ithaca’, in which Joyce adopted the technical jargon of specific sciences to fulfil his ‘mathematico-astronomico-physico-mechanico-geometrico-chemico sublimation’ (Ellmann, 501). Kenner stresses too that the interpolations resemble the headings in ‘Aeolus’, both episodes being ‘journalistic in thrust’, and ‘Cyclops’ in fact vulgarising the same themes which ‘the bricoleurs of “Aeolus” had imagined themselves to be treating with suave detachment’ (Kenner, 100). It is via the interpolations that ‘Cyclops’ transcends what Bakhtin identifies as the ‘stylistics of “private craftsmanship”’ and moves towards the ‘open spaces of public squares, streets, cities and villages, of social groups, generations and epochs’ (Bakhtin, 269).
Yet if the interpolations instigate an opening out and decentralising of language, it is important that they do not achieve this entirely in isolation. They repeatedly move off from and feed back into the pub narrative. An appreciation of the extent to which the interpolations and pub narrative entwine, alongside an identification of the moral function of the interpolations, calls into question their reputation as merely parody. This is a reputation which has persevered through the most detailed analyses of the episode: Kenner repeatedly identifies the interpolations as ‘parodies’, and Don Gifford’s Ulysses Annotated annotates each interpolation with the description ‘Parody’, summarising each with a sense of which literary form they are subjecting to parody. Likewise, traditional readings of ‘Cyclops’ which assert it as Joyce’s most political episode – owing to the citizen’s avid nationalist discourse – fail to capture the true dynamism of an episode which abounds equally in religion, and conceives early Christianity as a site of origin from which Irish political disputes still develop.
In Joyce’s Revenge: History, Politics, and Aesthetics in Ulysses, Andrew Gibson reads ‘Cyclops’ as a form of complex retribution taken by Joyce upon Anglo-Irish revivalism. From the outset, Gibson recognises that this reading subverts the political focus of earlier critics:
65 The German sociologist Robert Michels (1876-1936) defined and analysed centripetal and centrifugal politics in his