Ulysses/Telemachus

Summary: the opening lines, the entire opening chapter, is like a cannon being fired right at Rome. Right on the nose.

Summary

Odyssey Parallels

The parallels with the opening chapters of The Odyssey are subtle, but present. The title of Chapter 1 is "Telemachus." Telemachus is Odysseus's son, and The Oydssey starts us in the middle of the action - much like we begin in the middle of Stephen's and Buck's morning "ritual." In The Odyssey, Odysseus has been away for ten years, first fighting the Trojan War, then being held captive by Calypso. The book begins with Telemachus being humiliated by the hundred suitors, who are literally eating up Odysseus's wealth while he is away, and basically waiting for Penelope to give up hope of her husband Odysseus returning, declare him dead, and pick a new husband.

The theme of the "death" or apparent death of Telemachus's father is echoed in Stephen's preoccupation with the recent death of his mother, whose death he and Buck Mulligan discuss. Telemachus and Stephen (both sons) are parallel characters in the two books.

Like Telemachus, who, in the first two chapters, is galvanized by Athene, the goddess protector of Odysseus, to take up his manly duty to stand up for his father's honor and seek him out, thereby stirring up trouble in defense of his father, Stephen also stirs up trouble between himself and his roommates - first with Mulligan over a careless comment about his dead mother, and then with Haines, over the tumultuous and loaded topic of Ireland and England.

The sea imagery, and reference to poets and poetry (or, as the case may be, bawdy Irish drinking songs) abound, recalling Homer. Nautical references. The Ship.

Finally - unfinished business that will come up later. Buck Mulligan wanting the key, and to meet for a drink, and asking for money - all of this, in addition to being in the first sentence of the novel, portend that we shall see Buck Mulligan again soon. His ballad, his jokes, stay with us throughout the book. Echoes of this chapter abound.

Major Themes

Major themes in the chapter include:

• Buck Mulligan's inversion of the Catholic Mass and Christianity in general. The opening chapter is full of pokes at the church in Rome.
• References to numerous poets, Irish and otherwise (Algernon Swinburne, Walt Whitman, W. B. Yeats, bawdy Irish drinking songs, and the Ballad of Joking Jesus)
• Themes of Ireland vs. England, homerule, politicans such as Parnell, and anti-semitic themes are all referenced in the first chapter. These recur throughout Ulysses, even serving (as in the case of nationalism, anti-semitism, and Chapter 12, Cyclops) as the entire theme of the chapter.
• Discussions of, images of, Ireland abound; the broken mirror, the old woman, Stephen himself.

The Ballad of Joking Jesus

Joyce inserted his friend Oliver Gogarty's poem, "The Song of the Cheerful (but slightly sarcastic) Jesus," by putting it in Buck Mulligan's mouth as the "Ballad of Joking Jesus":

I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.

My mother's a jew, my father's a bird.

With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree,

So here's to disciples and Calvary.

If anyone thinks that I amn't divine

He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine

But have to drink water and wish it were plain

That I make when the wine becomes water again.

Goodbye, now, goodbye. Write down all I said

and tell Tom, Dick, and Harry I rose from the dead.

What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly

And Olivet's breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye.

Olivet is a small ridge in Jerusalem. Haines says of this: "We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn't it?"

Stephen mentions to Haines that he hears this poem, three times a day, after meals.

Notes

Pages 1-10

Introibo ad altare Dei. - I will go in to the altar of God. The book starts, right off the bat, by mocking the Catholic Mass, starting ceremonially, and invoking the beginning of Homer's Odyssey.

Kinch - nickname for Stephen; means "knife" (an image that recurs throughout Ulysses)

For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. - Mocking the Catholic Mass

Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you? - Mocks the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ during Mass. Suggests there must be some kind of "electric current" or other-worldly science that makes transubstantiation happen. This is another recurring theme throughout Ulysses - both Stephen and Leopold are well-versed in modern scientific concepts, and references to Newtonian science, Cartesian mathematics, and even Einsteinian concepts of space-time make their appearance throughout the book.

Malachi Mulligan - a name with the stress in the first syllable of the first and last names (the two dactyles).

jejune - dull or insipid, immature or childish

Haines is the third roommate of Daedalus and Mulligan.

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. / Lend us a loan of your noserad to wipe my razor. - The blade/knife imagery again.

The bard's noserag. A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you?

Itsn't the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? - reference to Algy is Algernon "Algy" Swinburne, whose poem, "A Triumph of Time," contains the line: "I will go back to the great sweet mother / mother & lover" (referring to the sea)

The snotgreen sea. The scrotuntightening sea. - A reference to Homer's "wine-dark sea," made more Irish.

Epi oinopa ponton. - The original Greek, translating into the recurring phrase, "upon the wine-colored sea." The irony here is, this is one of the first terms any Greek student will learn. Mulligan pretends to know Greek, but uses two very common Greek phrases, the other being Thalatta - from Xeonophon's Anabasis.)