Telemachus
A novel set in Sydney 1984 which retells "Ulysses" from the Point of View of the son.
Telemachus

C2 Keywords

C2  Keywords

 

Method – Make a kind of Glossary. Create a different type of Explanatory Notes. Cite great concordances for Ulysses. Acknowledge Flaubert’s “Dictionary of Received Ideas” as inspiration.

GODS IN COUNCIL – a reference to Book I of The Odyssey. The Gods gather in session to discuss whether to allow Odysseus to return home to Ithaca.

Bardun – pun on the author’s name by reversing syllables.

Source – Dylan Thomas, Under Milkwood.

FIRST VOICE – opening narrative voice in Under Milk Wood.

Walespurgis night – setting for Faust by J. W. von Goethe (1749-1832). Also, pun on Wales. Note ‘Wealhistic utterance’ [OE Wealh Celt, Welshman, foreigner].

Bloomsday eve – aficionados gather to celebrate Joyce’s epic novel on 16 June each year.

Insert references to Hamlet – graveyard’s scream; fog breathes calumny; unhumaned highways inter alia.

Act 1, Scene 1 – this heading announces the commencement of Telemachus as story. It channels the style and form of Under Milk Wood. Note various references to Thomas’ appearance. The BBC first broadcast Under Milk Wood on 25 January 1954 (two months after the author’s death). “Tonight, we present Ulysses as a radio play,” says the announcer. This alludes to the fact that Thomas was clearly influenced by the single-day, dawn-to-night, dream-to-dream structure of Ulysses. This section channels Thomas’ great overture with its use of phonetic spelling and a hyper-lyrical style: onec upon tiem, anna vary gud tiem twas, to start at the starting, sprung moonless night etcetera. This is one of the best passages in TMAC. Replace Blind Captain Cat LISTENING with the human body experiencing sensations with all its senses: SEE, DETECT, FEEL, HEAR.

Sydney, Australia, 1984 – setting of the novel.

Pallas Athena drops – a reference to her entrance to earth in Book I of the Odyssey.

two shadow-shapes pixelate across the screen – THE BLOTS (See Appendix A). This reference loops the whole text by alluding to the appendices of Telemachus.

BURTON – Richard Burton, CBE (1925-1984), Welsh actor. First Voice in BBC broadcast (see above).

MEILLON – John Meillon, OBE (1934-1989), prolific Australian character actor. Voice of Victoria Bitter beer advertisement.

Twin narrators – this method juxtaposes Welsh and Australian narratorial voices: BURTON (representing Wales) and MEILLON (quintessentially Australian). This links the author with Thomas. Note – the author’s middle name is, in fact, Thomas.

Homeric & Joycean Imagery – “Faugh a ballagh!” we hear. This is an Irish battle cry. “Philotimo!” is the rejoinder. This literally means ‘for the love of honour’ in Greek. The characters of Hellenic heritage are variously known by nicknames: Macareus (son of Aeolus), Sophos (or Sage), Dikaiosynē (Glory), and Andreia (Manly Spirit). “Molon labe! (come and take it!),” was an incitement uttered by Leonidas of Sparta at Xerxes I, the Persian Emperor, during the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE). Leonidas commanded a small group of soldiers who delayed the Persian advance, enabling the Greeks to rally. Eventually, the Greek navy defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis, ending the threat to the Peloponnese. Xerxes had the corpse of Leonidas decapitated and the head impaled on a pole. In contrast, the traditional Greek battle cry, “Alale Alala! Alala Alea!,” is used to motivate the fighting spirit of attackers SHIFT TO the abandoned printing works inside Beta House WHICH LINKS to the offices of the “Freeman’s Journal” in Ulysses. Namecheck Crawford and Bloom. In a stunning metonymy, the author reduces the sword and shield of Achilles to a crowbar and an old beach towel.

Gunshot – A gunshot replaces Joyce’s SHOUT IN THE STREET. Stephen refers to God as such a shout, which emanates from a game of hockey while he is discussing history with Headmaster Deasy. References to the suicide of Australian poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, are evident throughout this segment. He killed himself with a rifle in tea tree scrub near his home in Brighton, Melbourne on 24 June 1870. Contributing factors were a failed claim on his family estate in Scotland, lack of funds, meagre prospects, and chronic depression since a riding accident.

Enter Tom Hallem – introduced in disturbed sleep. For content of his dream, see Table 1.

 

Table 1. Father-Son & Family References During Tom Hallem’s Dream

Text Meaning
Hyperion’s curls tallith Jove’s forehead Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4, line 56 + a fringed shawl traditionally worn by Jewish men at prayer + Hamlet 3:4:56 again. Hamlet rebukes Gertrude comparing his father to Claude. This image combines good & evil elements into a single face (that of Don Cane). It is thus a humanistic image, rather than Shakespeare’s severe dichotomy.
A never-seen father’s face reconstructed in a cracked shaving mirror Tom tries to see his father’s features in his own face. Alludes to Joyce’s cracked looking glass and Caliban’s mirror.
Hamlet the son witnessing the ghost of Hamlet the father as a young man as himself An attempt to summarise what Shakespeare was getting at.
Bloom sees SD on the way to Dignam’s funeral See excellent blog on the Hades episode on Blooms & Barnacles website – https://www.bloomsandbarnacles.com/blog/ulysses-amp-the-odyssey-hades
Old Joyce observing young Joyce What an author does.
Caliban’s rage at his own image An allusion to Mulligan’s jibe as Stephen gazes at himself in a cracked mirror: “The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror”. Mulligan is referring to the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). Oscar Wilder defines two great movements in 19th century literature: “The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. / The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.”
Bring down the Joycean motherlode!!! Hamlet re-fathered. Stephen Dedalus de-fathered. Freudly slant. Amor matris. Artist, creator of Wordworld
Mulligan’s dressing gown His cassock or ferraiolo in Chapter I.
Liliata rutilantium / Turma circumdet / Iubilantium te virginum A reference to Stephen Dedalus recalling the prayer around his mother’s deathbed (trans. “May the troop of confessors, glowing like lilies, surround you. May the choir of virgins, jubilant, take you in”).
Gloria Patri Glory Be to the Father
Major Donald John Cane in a Bushranger helicopter, Ma Rung, Phuc Tuy, 1966 There are many references to the war record of Donald John Cane in Telemachus. This aspect links him directly to Odysseus, the master-strategist soldier. Some references are apocryphal. Sometimes, timing is contradictory or actions overlap. This calls into question the veracity of his accounts. Is he a fraudster?
Daniel Boone extraction In April 1967, MACV-SOG commenced Operation Daniel Boone, a cross-border recon effort in Cambodia by US special forces to locate enemy bases, transit routes and supply dumps. Teams had to walk back across the Vietnam border to be collected by helicopter. Like Odysseus, Don Cane is a cunning and experienced soldier engaged in vital intelligence operations.
Poison down me earhole, lad! Hamlet Senior in Hamlet
old Uncle Cuck and Mother Grogan Claudius and Gertrude in Hamlet
The son must revenge the murder of his father Orestes the avenger. Stephen the dissembler. Hamlet the sieve. Nobbled Telemachus.
Arius and Sabellius Arius argued for the supremacy of God the Father, and maintained that the Son of God was simply the oldest and most beloved Creature of God, made from nothing, because of being the direct offspring. Sabellius taught that God was single and indivisible, with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being three modes or manifestations of one divine Person.
Introibo ad altare Dei Opening lines of the Latin Mass. Literally, “I will go to the altar of God.” Mulligan’s first words in Ulysses. His shaving routine is presented as a parody of Mass.
Dove-fucked as Leda was swanned Bestial forms assumed by both God and Zeus to impregnate their chosen vessels.
Stephen Dedalus’ mother A deeply religious person who died of Tuberculosis.

Finally, the group breaks into Beta House. See Table 2.

 

Table 2. References to Forced Entry into Beta House

Text Meaning
Andreia finally breaks into Athena’s temple The sack of Troy now begins.
A digital clock brands the darkness with four red numerals: One-two-five-five. The time at this moment in the narrative. Note it is 5-minutes before the text at the start of Chapter 2 (see above).
Martello violated Ulysses starts with Stephen inside the tower being turned into an unwelcome lodger then asked to return his key. It is also represented as Troy in TMAC
Ajax inside (the horse)
Pyrrhus has gone hunting Pyrrhus (3rd BCE) impressed Ptolemy with his strength and courage at hunting parties. He was an aristocratic thug, loathed by his subjects and deposed on multiple occasions. His tactics in warfare inspired the saying, ‘a Pyrrhic Victory’

The group decide to burn some abandoned books (See Table 3). The list is rendered alliteratively. This act is symbolic of reactionary ignorance and alludes to Fahrenheit 451.

 

Table 3. Books Burned for Illumination

Author Text(s) immolated Miscellany
Greer gutted Female Eunuch First name – Germaine
Castenada consumed The Teachings of Don Juan Carlos Castaneda, American author (1925-1998) of Peruvian descent, who became famous for three novels purporting to be ethnographic accounts of his apprenticeship to a Shaman named don Juan Matus.
Irigaray also Speculum of the Other Woman An analysis of Phallocentrism in Western philosophy and psychoanalytic theory
Mildling rent The Short Story Embassy Reader in English, University of Sydney at the time of Telemachus
Morehouse doused The Americans, Baby: A Discontinuous Narrative of Stories and Fragments; The Electrical Experience: A Discontinuous Narrative; Conference-ville Prolific Sydney writer

They proceed to the staircase. It is blocked. Tom Hallem rises, dons ironic ‘armour’ and makes his way towards the mezzanine ledge. Police sirens are heard in the distance. There is a short, confused exchange. Refer to the ghost scene on the ramparts in Hamlet. Identities are flipped so the son (above) is perceived as the father when seen from below (EXPLAIN SYMBOLISM). There is a break-out west by the intruders, which alludes to Aeneas escaping Troy. Poseidon’s rage is a reference to his abiding hatred towards Odysseus for blinding his son, Polyphemus.

End radio-play. Begin prose – Elizabeth Archer is represented in the opening scene as Athena. Her naming refers to Athena’s prowess with bow and arrow. She conceived at Vathy, Samos, 1968. The scene utilises the uncontrolled flow of sperm onto the female body, as per Athena with Hephaestus (although rape was not involved). She was heavily-pregnant in London (c.1968-69). The baby was named, Chaim. It means ‘life’ in Hebrew. Chaim died in hospital from complications arising from spina bifida. What sent Tiresias blind was stumbling upon Athena bathing naked. INSERT sequence of famous filicides and bad families – Agave, Heracles, Medea, Oedipus, Oedipus and Telegonus, Cuchulain & Connla, Atreus, Thyestes. “I’m relatively mild in comparison,” concluded Don Cane… breaking down the fictive wall. Rissole warriors are regular visitors to Returned and Services League (RSL) Clubs in Australia. The acronym “RSL” resembles an abbreviated form of ‘rissole.’ Put a ducat in my clack-dish is a crass metaphor in Shakespeare for sexual penetration (Lucio, Measure for Measure, Act 3, Scene 2). Mulligan’s arm: Cranly’s arm. This is an allusion to Stephen’s reaction to Mulligan’s touch. He compares it negatively to the thrill of Cranly’s grip in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which some critics saw as a homo-erotic image. Both situations ended badly. Stephen’s handkerchief is handed to Mulligan in Ulysses, while Tom’s is deployed as a vaginal wipe by Elizabeth in Telemachus. Stephen uses the rag to compare the national colour of Ireland with the colour of snot. In Telemachus, there are ironic images to Australia’s national colours of green and gold. “Our home. Girt by semen” is a pun on Line 4 of the Australian national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair.” Link to Pater’s golden book which Wilde reduced to a yellow book in Dorian Gray with its associations with jaundice, adultery, jealousy, degradation, and death. New Hell(as) in bush. This is a pun on Hellenistic idealism in Bernard O’Dowd’s sonnet, “Australia.”

Milk – “Take down the milkjug Kinch, Mulligan loqt.” Loqt = said. The visit of the milkwoman is a critical scene early in Ulysses. She represents Ireland both past and present. Her entrance focuses Stephen, Mulligan and Haines on the relationship between Imperial England and Ireland. A small detail is that she possesses a bunch of keys on her waist, whereas Stephen will soon be asked to hand over his key to the tower. Stephen wonders if she is a god in disguise. In Classical literature, gods often present themselves as subalterns to test the xenia of households. Shakespeare used this device regularly with nobles. This scene culminates in a Joyce-like Modernist passage of punning portmanteau words: I-land; Anglo-Nomans; Crete an Irish Fle(e/a) State; an old ham/letter; knewspaper; frying flresh; kid knees; fresh hamolette.

 

Table 4. Portmanteau Words

Word Meaning
I-land Ireland. Also, an allusion to Joyce’s self-possession.
Anglo-Nomans POun on Norman conquest of Britain (1066). Also, an allusion to Odysseus tricking Polyphemus by claiming ‘No-man’ was present in the cave.
Crete Pun on ‘create’
Fle(e/a) Reference to the large quantum of people historically exiting Ireland, as well as the way that Imperialism reduced the population to the status of louse.
Ham/letter Combines reference to Hamlet with Bloom’s letter from Martha Clifford
Knewspaper Clearly, past tense of newspaper
Frying flresh, Kid knees, hamolette Comic references to Bloom’s intentions for breakfast.

This passage ends with a word-stream that dribbles to its core psychological meaning: flounder founder flow foul (a fish, origin, the Liffey, Mulligan). Foucault’s carceral is a reference to the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham and its amplification by the State from prisons to the broader society in Discipline And Punish. A chain of relations/events in REAL LIFE link Marcel Duchamp and James Joyce:

  1. The Armory Show (1913) in New York where “Nude Descending a Staircase” became a cause celebre > Duchamp relocates to the US > John Quinn, collector, beings purchasing his works > he is also a patron of Joyce
  2. Man Ray’s produced photographic portraits of Joyce c.1922 (he was one of Duchamp’s closest friends)
  3. Mary Reynold’s biography noted they both attended her open-house at 14 Rue Halle
  4. Joyce allegedly told people that he disliked Duchamp’s treatment of women, indicating a degree of familiarity with the painter’s behaviour
  5. Duchamp is a possible source for Professor Ciondolone in Finnegans Wake. There are also references to avarice in drafts during this period, which may refer to Duchamp’s marriage to the heiress, Lydie Sarazin-Levassor. See “James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp” by William Anastasi (Tout Fait, 2003).
  6. They are characterised as the twins, Burrus and Caseous (Shem/Shaun) in Finnegans Wake. Here, Joyce recognises their shared impact on contemporary culture
  7. Both D&J realized that ART must make a complete break – both artists discombobulated notions of Form
  8. They both exalted ordinary stuff – Joyce examines quotidian life in the lower-middle classes in Ulysses; Duchamp was famous for elevating everyday objects to art (toilet bowl, coffee grinder, hat rack etc)
  9. Everything became centripetal and self-reflexive in their aftermath – both effectively cancelled any option of breakthrough innovation by virtue of their methodology and cosmology about what is art
  10. Beckett tried to go backwards to go forwards with his ‘retrogressive tendency’ in Proust – Samuel Beckett wrote a critical study of Marcel Proust in which he advanced this theory. It was seen as a means of progressing beyond Joyce by virtue of a movement backwards followed by a side-stepping motion forward (akin to dance)
  11. Art was deregulated by J&D but to what end? – a cry in the dark querying the actual result of their tactics
  12. To hate your own vehicle of expression, they both concluded thus… JJ with F(W)ake. MD in Etant Donnes – this is what they ended up thinking and doing. Ultimately, they both became trapped by their own methodology.

INSERT LIST OF SUBJEX – birth, love, war, religious scenes, history, mourning, death of a knight, my mother’s body – this is a comic list of subjects in history considered acceptable for art. (Anselm) Kiefer is presented as the only modern painter to tick off the full inventory. Happy Days is a play by Samuel Beckett. (Herbert) Marcuse’s Cosmos of Hope is a reference to Eros and Civilization. Two key works by Duchamp were L.H.O.O.Q. (placing a moustache on a print of the “Mona Lisa’) and Le Grand Verre (ENG. The Large Glass). Full title: La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (ENG. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even). Stupid as a painter, is an old French saying according to Duchamp (“The painter was considered stupid, but the poet and writer very intelligent. I wanted to be intelligent. I had to have the idea of inventing”). Guernica (1937) is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It is regarded as one of the great political and Modernist paintings of the twentieth century, portraying the bombing of Guernica on 26 July 1937 in the Spanish Civil War. It took Picasso 35 days.

Duchamp 1, Picasso 1 at the end of extra time. Penalty shoot-out to follow. MD defeated JJ in a round-robin tournament – a comic rendition of their artistic achievements in terms of football results.

Tom’s library – Thames and Hudson monographs. These were large format picture books, including colour plates. For many Australian artists up to the 1990s, they represented the only access to images of famous modern art in Europe and America. It changed with increasingly affordable overseas travel as well as the emergence of the internet. The Crisis in Modern Art (actually, Beyond the Crisis in Art) & Australian Scapegoat are both books by the British art critic, Peter Fuller. He appears in Chapter 10 opening the EAx X-mass Show. His comments reflect theories espouses in those works. He died in a car accident in 1990. The two large format books represent the works of Ernst Ludwig Kirchener and Anselm Kiefer. Kirchener was a leading exponent of Germen Expressionism in the period before WW1. Kiefer emerged as one of Germany’s leading artists in the 1980s.

The theme of milk, cows and the old milkwoman recurs. There are various – mainly bovine – references to her as a metonymic, mythic representation of Ireland: silk of the kine (Stephen uses this term, which applies to Old Ireland); wandering crone (also, Stephen); to patriots, beautiful Clathene (referring to Cathleen Ni Houlihan,  mythical symbol and emblem of Irish nationalism and the subject of a play by William Butler Yeats); lower form of an immortal (Stephen but ‘lowly’); Heine’s cow (see extract below); oh Io, you image sweet (Zeus transformed her into a cow to avoid detection by Hera); and sightless as Oedipus on the arm of pale Antigone (Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonnus). Insert Heine:

Evil is her look and slant.
It is said whene’er she stares
At some hapless cow, its milk
Dries, its udder withers straight. (Heinrich Heine, Atta Troll, Canto XVII)

Stephen makes a joke about “all Ireland being washed by the gulf stream” when Mulligan jibes him about his hydrophobia. This is applied to Sydney’s meteorological phenomenon of late afternoon thunderstorms from the south, which are known as ‘Southerlies.’ They were the subject of a poem by Henry Lawson titled, “The Southerly Buster” (1910). Sydneysiders were warned about its approach by a flag flying the letters “JB” at the Observatory and a red light indicating one-hour’s warning on the GPO.

Royal Commission into British Nuclear Testing – established by the Hawke Government in 1984 to investigate the use of Australian territory and soldiers by British scientific and military authorities to test nuclear weapons in the 1950s. It was Prime Minister Menzies who granted approval. The Commission was chaired by “Diamond” Jim McClelland. It heard evidence of radioactive clouds scattering plutonium across the Maralinga ranges in the 1950s. Emu Field was the site of the Operation Totem nuclear tests conducted by the British government in October 1953. The devices were sited on towers and yielded 9 kilotons and 7 kilotons respectively. The Hiroshima A-Bomb was 15 kilotons. It was later found that the radioactive cloud from the first detonation did not disperse as expected, and travelled north-east over the Australian continent. There is evidence that British scientists continued testing Strontium Ninety levels in the Australian food chain until 1978 by stealing body parts – usually femurs – from dead babies. The British Museum also smuggled one dried head and one hundred and twenty-four skulls from South Australia (Ngarrindjeri people). “Take my love to a foreign shore,” is a sentence cribbed from the lyrics of “Soldier Boy” by The Shirelles: “Take my love with you / To any port or foreign shore.” It was released in 1962, the year of birth of both Tom Hallem and Billy Capri. The subject matter/date explain Penelope Hallem’s distaste.

Various allusions to O’Dowd’s sonnet, “Australia” – Delos of a coming Sun-God’s race; ossein arcs winked; New Hellas in Bush; millennial Eden now lurking ‘neath your face.

Time moved by little fidget wheels since then – a line indebted to Kenneth Slessor’s poem, “Five Bells.” It refers to the fact that the Sydney Opera House had been a concrete ribcage gridded with cranes when Don Cane departed Sydney.

 

Table 5. List of Filipino Cultural and Tagalog Language references (not chronological)  

Text Meaning
A carved Sungka board Filipina mancala game
Paumanhin An apology (light)
Yun bay un? ERROR
Marunong ba kayong Filipino, poq? Do you know Filipino, Poq?
Iyan ba ang tip ko? Is that my tip?
Jollibee collectibles Popular range of small novelty toys at Jollibee fast food restaurants. It negotiated the entrance of McDonald’s into the national market in 1983 by focusing on local tastes.
Inflatable pool bed in Boracay Boracay is an island in the central Philippines famous for resorts and beaches.
Pinoy Lego This doesn’t just refer to an actual product. It’s a metaphor.
Visayan. Cebu City maybe. The Visayas or Visayan Islands is the central of three administrative divisions of the Philippines. Cebu City is a major centre. It is the oldest city and first capital of the nation.
Angeles incident. Paid off the Pulis. Suggests dubious sexual activity with a bribe to avoid prosecution
Typhoon Agnes Typhoon Agnes, or Typhoon Undang, was the final tropical cyclone to affect the Philippines during the 1984 Pacific typhoon season. It occurred between 31 October and 8 November.

Philippine Airlines suspended all southbound flights from Manila until November 5. TMAC is set on 6 November, meaning that Don Cane got out on one of the first flights. Later in C2: “They reopened Manila airport yesterday after the monsoon. Agnes lost power over the Philippines, picked up again in the South China Sea and battered Vietnam.”
Kumander Bucay Nickname for Norberto Manero Jnr, a member of the Ilaga paramilitary group of Christian Extremists. With his brother, he executed the Italian missionary, Tullio Favali. His claim to fame is extracting the brains from the dead priest’s skull and displaying them to a crowd. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Ilaga cannibals eating Father Favalli’s brain See above.
Don Moen A term of respect
I come from Ilocos. But I live in Manila Ilocos was the birthplace of President Marcos. He held significant real estate assets there. This comment indicates that the character comes from a privileged background. She is possibly being sent to Australia for her own safety.
Walo taong Eight years (lived in Manila)
not barong Means ‘type of dress.’ Barong tagalog is an embroidered long-sleeved formal shirt for men and a national dress of the Philippines.
Just ejecting Joe and Macoy might not make as much difference as you hope. Ramos. Aquino. They are all part of the same gang. The opinion that expelling the US and Marcos might not make a huge difference, given that the Philippines was controlled by an elite which included Marcos.
we have the Church The Catholic church become the leading force in the People Power Revolution in 1986.
And we are really… pikon. Testy. Easily angered.
There are many people with vested interests who want to slow the pace of reform. But the people are in a hurry. Later in this chapter, how Don got to the Philippines is explained: “Two grenades hurled into San Pedro Cathedral at the end of Easter Mass in Davao City. New People’s Army. PKP splinter group backed by China. I was sent out to finish the job with Nick Rowe when Marcos got distracted by the Moro. How I got to Manila.” Document the fall of Marcos regime.

 

Claymore tit – The M18A1 Claymore is a directional anti-personnel mine developed by Norman MacLeod (Calord Corporation) in the early 1950s. It is named after a large medieval Scottish sword. The Claymore can be command-detonated by remote-control but, in this instance, it was victim-activated by booby-trapping with a tripwire firing system. The Claymore fires steel balls 100m (110yd) within a 60° arc in front of the device. The United States Army accepted the weapon into service as the M18 Claymore. It was used in small numbers in Vietnam from 1961. It was not until the improved M18A1 developed that the Claymore became a widely used weapon.

Smells – commencing with war wounds. Molly’s jessamine is a reference to Molly Bloom’s perfume. Emma Bovary burned Turkish pastilles. Joyce always accompanies references to Gibraltar with odours. Enfleurage is a process that uses odorless fats to capture the fragrant compounds exuded by plants. Phan bo: this is a fertilizer, usually cow dung. Solvent extraction is a key part of the process for Homebake. Link to Slope’s work in Chapter 5 (p.248). “Coleridge had some” refers to his use of opium. Originally, Proust selected toast as the basis for involuntary memory, not Madeleines in Du côté de chez Swann. ANZAC soldiers used gas masks or fag-butts to block out the stench of dead bodies on Sari Bair Ridge (August 1915) during the Gallipoli campaign. There are multiple references in TMAC to the fact that Gallipoli was the site of ancient Troy. This is a pleasant coincidence for this novel. Molly likes Opoponax, a sweet myrrh. Note Joyce’s scatological tendencies, as expressed in letters to Nora Barnacle. Boar taint: there is a myth that women go crazy over pigs and ham due to its odour. The narrator suggests putting it on hot bread. Link to Demeter bakery on the corner of Mitchell and Derwent Streets, Glebe. Joyce became a maestro of perfumery in order to write the Nausicaa episode. He was known as LE NEZ in Trieste (fact check). Havelock Ellis spent many hours in the natural science section of the British Museum researching the sexology of odour. He wrote extensively about smell in his opus, Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Volume 4, Section II contains the following sub-sections: “Rise of the Study of Olfaction – Cloquet – Zwaardemaker – The Theory of Smell – The Classification of Odors (sic) – The Special Characteristics of Olfactory Sensation in Man – Smell as the Sense of Imagination – Odors (sic) as Nervous Stimulants – Vasomotor and Muscular Effect – Odorous Substances as Drugs.” Sub-section III examines “The Specific Body Odors (sic) of Various People” including “certain poets and novelists.”  Ellis retained a deep interest in identifying literary sources and correspondences in his work. With animals, oil is naturally secreted into a pouch or pod. It can be chemically extracted. Musk is squeezed out of cysts near the buck’s arse. Water buffaloes hate the smell of humans. Once, I had to knock one down with a burst from Woofer’s gun. Bear bile extraction is more advanced in China:

 

  • One end of a rubber pipe is surgically attached to the gall bladder.
  • The other is connected to a fluid bag inside a box.
  • A metal jacket tightly holds the mechanism in place under the abdomen.
  • It is emptied every fortnight.
  • The animal is fed a blend of sedatives and whey protein. Haut-goût.

 

Dope leaf stewing in butter-bricks in Non’s kitchen. This is a common way to increase the potency of low-grade marijuana leaves. Bloom’s obsession with the smell of his own toes left him contorted on the floor like a crumpled foetus. Lacerated fragments is a metaphor for deleted text as well as the staccato style evident in large sections of Telemachus. There is an unattributed reference here to an Australian patrol in Vietnam burying a dead enemy soldier – the grave was dug too short, so the soldiers had to smash the corpse across the knees with a machete and trample it into the slot. Link to Dignam funeral. Also, that of Choc Wheaton. Plus, Tom Hallem (1999). Chapter 2 is a death chapter (see also C6). There is a myth in primitive cultures that eating a raw human heart protects the consumer against blade-strike. In the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), the Boxers believed that they became bulletproof after meditating for one hundred days. They also recited spells and incantations as they strolled into battle. A parallel in the type and quantum of slaughter is drawn with Australian soldiers caught in an enfilade in the Sugarloaf salient at Fromelles in 1916. During the siege of the British Legation in Beijing in 1900, corpses were piled against the exterior walls of the compound. Subsequently, the narrator of Telemachus stated that five thousand Australian soldiers were killed in one night on 19 July 1916. This is incorrect. Actually, it was five thousand casualties with two thousand deaths. Onwards came Chinese volunteers until they overwhelmed the American’s fortified positions is a reference to the Korean War (1950-1953). Stalin’s ladder probably refers to Chinese soldiers climbing over piles of dead bodies to gain height. The reference to Stalin suggests the PRC was coerced into this type of battle by the Soviet leader, who insisted on similar tactics in WW2.

Menelaus’ dilemma – The King of Sparta gave his daughter, Hermione, in marriage to Orestes then had to take her back and give her to Neoptolemus when he turned up to claim his bride, as per previous agreement. Telemachus took part in the original nuptials in Sparta, shortly before she was sent to Achilles’ son. Orestes killed Aegisthus and Clytemnestra then Neoptolemus to retrieve Hermione. Chinese emperors were constrained from orgasm. They had to follow moon cycles, as prescribed by monks. Apparently, this impeded their ability to conceive children, as their orgasn=m was often out of synchronisation with the menstrual cycles of their partners. Andromache kept Hermione barren with spells, while she was the sex slave of Neoptolemus.

Pag ibig ko sa iyo – means “when I love you,” in Tagalog.

Unrequited love and infatuation– insert list of seven instances from literary history (noting Joyce’s obsession with numerology):

  1. Beatrice – inspiration for Dante Aligheri’s “Vita Nuova.” Also, commonly identified as one of his guides in the last book of the Divine Comedy. Dante claimed to have met Beatrice only twice in his life, with a nine-year gap, but loved her for the rest of his life.
  2. Hephaestus – his wife Aphrodite had an affair with Ares, the god of war. Hephaestus ensnared them in an unbreakable chain-link net and dragged them to Mount Olympus. Also, the attempted rapist of Athena.
  3. Nora – probably Nora Barnacle.
  4. Francesca da Rimini – Dante and Virgil meet Francesca and her lover Paolo in The Divine Comedy in the second circle of hell.
  5. Clifford Chatterley – husband of Constance Reid in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He is a good guy paralysed from the waist down in WW1.
  6. Nicholas hiding in the bathtub – source unknown. Probably the Tsar Nicholas.
  7. Philemon and Baucis – old couple. See Goethe’s Faust – Part 2. Represented as the Hensley’s in Telemachus. Various references to life in the Snowy region in the 1930-40’s characterise their interaction.

Sensuality and STDs – insert list of twenty instances:

  1. Gold bikinis on a bar top on Broadway. Topless barmaids 12-2! Lovely Lingerie Ladies – see Chapter Five.
  2. Alisoun is built like a weasel – the lead character in Chaucer’s “A Miller’s Tale.”
  3. Hard wanks down a Camperdown Beat – men met for anonymous sex in the toilets under the grandstand at Camperdown Park, Sydney.
  4. Pater’s Marius – lead character in Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater.
  5. Sleaze Ball toilets slippery with condoms – an annual party in September or October originating with the gay community in Sydney
  6. Everything changed with the Pill. Now it’s changing back with AIDS – Telemachus is set in the early period of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Sydney.
  7. Bring syphilis to your honeymoon like Churchill’s father – it is rumoured that Lord Randolph Churchill (1849-19895) was suffering from secondary syphilis prior to his marriage, although his later illness could have been a brain tumour or Multiple Sclerosis.
  8. He went crazy at the Treasury bench – it is said that Tertiary Syphilis commenced while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  9. Boogie Nights – seminal 1997 drama about the emergence of the pornography industry in California (written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson). See Aphrodite.
  10. Countess Ellen – a character in The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
  11. Poison by convention – a standard mode of expiration for female characters said to have committed immoral acts in 19th century fiction. See Emma Bovary. Alternately, Anna Karenina threw herself under a train.
  12. Sulky Mellors – the third wheel in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He could hardly be called a ‘lover’ really. It is perfunctory union on his part. However, it does enable Lawrence to present a load of class issues as well as note the ongoing repercussions of the Great War.
  13. Constance Chatterley updated Elizabeth Archer for twentieth century tastes – I think it’s fair to say that these characters in Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Portrait of a Lady are correspondents.
  14. Bernini’s mattress. Sleeping Hermaphrodite – an ancient marble sculpture now in the Louvre depicting a life size Hermaphrodituswith penis. In 1620, Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpted a trompe l’oeil mattress for the statue to be laid upon. It was part of the Borghese Collection and inspired Algernon Charles Swinburne‘s poem “Hermaphroditus” (1863).
  15. Tralala – female character in Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jnr. Gangraped.
  16. Guinevere taking sanctuary in a convent – see Tennyson, Idylls of the Kink. She is forgiven by Arthur, repents and serves in the convent until her death. Malory, in contrast, has her sentenced to burn at the stake in Le Morte d’Arthur; albeit rescued by Lancelot.
  17. Go down Makati (a famous transexual strip in Manila) – they wrap their organs flat in a jock strap.
  18. Salome strangling John (the Baptist) – see Oscar Wilde’s one-act play, Salome. Also, Gustave Flaubert’s short story, “Herodias.”
  19. Maids hanged in the compound – Telemachus’ atypical act of savagery in The Odyssey. This is an emblem of his father’s negative influence.
  20. Marry your brother’s wife like Henry Tudor. Impregnate her cousin – just a historic fact about Henry VIII.

  

SYDNEY HILTON HOTEL BOMBING

On 13 February 1978, a bomb exploded in a garbage bin outside the Hilton Hotel, Sydney. The hotel was being used as the site of the first Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting (CHOGRM). It exploded as the bin was emptied into a garbage truck outside the hotel at 12:40 a.m. Two garbagemen, Alec Carter and William Favell, were killed. This can be linked to the garbage truck in Chapter 3. A police officer guarding the entrance to the hotel lounge, Paul Burmistriw, died from his injuries. Eleven others were injured. Twelve foreign leaders were staying in the hotel, but none were hurt. It has been a highly controversial attack due to allegations that Australian security forces were responsible. This explains the following text in TMAC: “ASIO bin-switch.” The following extract refers to another theory: “path of bliss straight down George Street in a municipal garbage truck.” Ananda Marga means ‘path of bliss’ in Sanskrit. It is a socio–spiritual organisation founded in India, in 1955. The bombing was said to have been motivated by persecution of the group in India. “CSIRO bomb-makers” represents another conspiracy theory. See summary of Hilton Hotel Bombing at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Hilton_Hotel_bombing#Accusations_of_conspiracy

 

OTHER BOMBINGS

 This incident is connected to bombings in Ireland and the Philippines, which relate to Ulysses and Don Cane (see Table 5).

 

Table 6. Analogous bombings

Text Meaning
Republicans finally blew-up Nelson’s column in 1966. Fiftieth anniversary gift. It left a jagged stump like Nelson’s arm. An irony. Nelson’s Pillar was a granite column capped by a statue of Horatio Nelson in the centre Sackville Street (later O’Connell Street) in Dublin. It was completed in 1809. It became a symbol of British Imperialism. It was severely damaged by explosives planted by Irish republicans in March 1966. Its remnants were destroyed by the Irish Army. It is the site of the ‘Parable of the Plums’ in the Ithaca episode of Ulysses (see TMAC, p.825).
See above table for grenade attack on San Pedro Cathedral at the end of Easter Mass in Davao City by the New People’s Army. 19 April 1981 – Seventeen people were killed in a grenade attack by the New People’s Army (NPA) on San Pedro cathedral, Davao City, during mass. Two grenades were thrown into the congregation as the traditional Easter service was concluding.
Three bombs in rush hour. South Leinster Street 1974. Colm Toibin felt the last one in the reading rooms of the National Library nearby. A thud then silence then sirens then pall. Late Friday afternoon. Stay up all night listening to radio reports. The bombs ran-east-west down busy streets towards rail stations. Thirty-three dead plus a full-term foetus. On 17 May 1974, there were a series of co-ordinated bombings in counties Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland. Three bombs exploded in Dublin during the evening rush hour and a fourth exploded in Monaghan almost ninety minutes later. Colm Tóibín FRSL (Born 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. He is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in Manhattan and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2017. The bombs killed 33 civilians and a full-term unborn child, and injured almost 300. They were the deadliest attack of the conflict known as the Troubles, and the deadliest attack in the Republic’s history. Most of the victims were young women, although the dead ranged from pre-born to 80 years. INSEERT TMAC: “Doesn’t count if still in the womb. Richie. Spina Bifida babies. See Chapters Four-Seven. Use Navigation Tool. Chaim. Six days it was left exposed and raw.” The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group from Northern Ireland, claimed responsibility for the bombings in 1993.
The Army finally demolished the granite stub to the acclamation of a swelling crowd. Humid February 1978. See Dot Point 1 above.
On the previous run, the cops blocked us from emptying the bins even though they were overflowing onto the footpath, claimed driver Bill Ebb. Council workers Carter and Favell were killed immediately. Constable Birmistriw died next day. Blew out the plate glass windows in the arcade. Marble Bar downstairs unscathed. See Hilton Hotel Bombing above.

 

The decline of Marcos was inevitable since Aquino’s murder – Ninoy” Aquino Jr. (1932-1983) was a Filipino politician who served as a senator of the Philippines (1967–1972) and governor of the province of Tarlac. He was a key figure on the opposition to President Marcos. He was arrested after the imposition of martial law in 1972 and spent seven years in gaol. In 1980, he was permitted by Marcos to travel to the United States for medical treatment following a heart attack. As the situation in the Philippines worsened, Aquino decided to return to face Marcos and restore democracy. He was assassinated at the Manila International Airport on August 21, 1983, upon returning from his self-imposed exile. His death revitalized opposition to Marcos. It also catapulted his widow, Corazon, into the political limelight. She later became President. Manila International Airport has been renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport in his honour. The anniversary of his death is a national holiday.

Lots of vets went Bush, mainly up the North Coast – a popular view in Australia is that a high proportion of Vietnam veterans, especially conscripts, were unable to reintegrate into society and relocated to the coastal regions of the North Coast of NSW. This semi-tropical region was an idyll for surfers, hippies and druggies.

“Ineluctable modality of the visible” – Joyce’s famous opening sentence to the Proteus episode. It would have made a good opening line for Ulysses. There is an excellent summary of this episiode on the Blooms and Barnacles website at: https://www.bloomsandbarnacles.com/blog/2019/02/19/decoding-dedalus-ineluctable-modalities.

Illegitimacy – see Table Seven.

 

Table 7. Treatments of Illegitimacy in the Western Canon

Text Meaning
“Now, gods, stand up for bastards” Edmund in King Lear
Who chose this face for me?” asks Stephen Dedalus. He can see its tracing when he looks at Simon Dedalus.

 
My own birth certificate is blank against the category titled FATHER. I bear a stranger’s name. Another alias. Autobiographical element.
Malory’s Arthur Arthur is the son of the High King of Britain Uther Pendragon and his new wife Igraine. He is taken by Sir Ector to be secretly fostered in the country after Uther’s death
Candide He is the bastard nephew, of Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh of Westphalia,
Edmund in Lear Illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester in King Lear. His villainy is forged in mutiny against the social order that denies him the same status as Edgar, the Ear’s legitimate heir. These half-brothers are models for Edmund and Edgar Hamley in C5. Illegitimacy within my own family will be examined in Vault.
A device often used by Austen Jane Austen.
Popular in Victorian fiction also. See Hugo, Dickens (x 4), Thackeray, Collins (multiple), Tolstoy, Gaskell, Hawthorne, Eliot, Hardy (x 4-6) A quick count of this device in the work of famous novelists. A percentage ratio could be calculated by division against total volumes.
Pansy was the daughter of Gisborne and Madame Merle See Henry James, Portrait of a Lady. This was the big climax of the novel. Elizabeth Archer is the namesake of the art gallery proprietor in TMAC (see C2).
Helen Schlegel E. M. Forster, Howard’s End. She conceives a child after a one-night stand with Leonard Bast(ard).

 

Names as imperfect anagrams – Hamlet Hallam Hallem I am. This sentence explains the process for naming TOM HALLEM in TMAC. It was an imperfect version of Hamlet and Arthur Hallam, just like his name.

Use of letters instead of names – hence, O. Also, X in “In Black Box.”

Naming – for naming that uses puns on characters from other books, direct appropriations and affected (nick)names: see TMAC character list in Appendix C. HCE goes by 190 naming variants and allusions in F(W)AKE – FACT. Filipinos ascribe nicknames to babies at birth. Mulligan called Stephen ‘KINCH’ and he was known as ‘BUCK’ in return. Gogarty said that ‘kinch’ was the sound a knife makes. Stephen used a double entendre in which Mulligan was a male animal as well as a guy with money who also borrows money. Mulligan’s ascribed first name, Malachi, was a strange amalgam of foreign and mythic names like Dedalus. It means Hebrew for ‘messenger.’ The name assumed by the Bishop of Armagh in the twelfth century was MALACHY.

Tom Hallem (Telemachus) asks about his father – Tom Hallem is searching for information about his father in Chapters 2 and 3 like Telemachus in The Odyssey. He asks Les Hallem, the Reverend Bent and Headmaster Westacott about Don Cane. “Did you know my father,” he asked his stepfather in a rare moment alone. His mother was always careful never to leave them together, or allow them to bond. This resembles the actions of Penelope on Ithaca. Les represents Nestor in this passage. He was stationed at the AATTV Duc My Ranger Training Centre, 300 miles north-east of Saigon. He recalls that Don Cane was deployed at Dong Ha, near the DMZ. This was a distance of 300 kms. There were rumours that Don was a member of Daniel Boone Squads fighting across the border in Cambodia and Laos. This espionage function is similar to that of Odysseus. Officially, Don Cane was killed during extraction to the Dak Seang Special Forces Camp, northwest of Kon Tum in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Odysseus was also missing-in-action, considered dead. Three rumours are then cited – he went to the States; he’s been working out of the Golden Triangle (assisting the CIA to airlift heroin to the USA for sale to fund covert operations globally); and he runs a bar in Phuket (many Australians opened bars in Thailand). Penelope Hallem’s marriage is compared to Classical queens who make multiple, tactical marriages. Cited examples are Penelope with her nephew Telegonus; Telemachus with Circe; Roman crones; Gertrude shifting; Chaucer’s knight (with quotes). I don’t think anyone would steal a copy of Return to the Chateau, says Tom to Billy on the telephone. It was the sequel to The Story of O by the author known as Pauline Reage.

Joyce & Scat – to write the Penelope episode, Joyce needed to secure a briefcase full of letters from Nora in 1909 that was stuck in Trieste. Kevin Birmingham describes the letters possessing a large, red express stamp affixed sideways in the top RH corner on each envelope, holding thick twice-folded pages filled on both sides in Nora’s neat handwriting with frequent misspellings and without punctuation. Write the dirty words BIG, he instructed Nora. Her style heavily influenced Joyce. A replica of Modernist High Style traces my stream of consciousness in naming Ana Lafei –  Anna as a palindrome, the allusion to Le fey (Lafei) in her family name, and an ironic link to Ana Livia Plurabelle, Lafeiyette, ana/nnal publishing and anitalane (see Blog 6 – https://www.telemachus.com.au/2021/06/20/anitalafeiane-the-initials-a-l-without-sky-sun-or-flood-and-without-vanity/).

Temporal recession of Don Cane – Sydney for Choc’s funeral > exit Richie > Manila safe haven > Saigon (1975) > Special Forces > Cambodia/Laos > working in the Vietnam Highlands (Katu, Bru, Rhade, Mngong, Gar) > the whole Conflict a place to get lost in > Sydney (Penelope, Helen) > Malaya > too young for Korea > recruited in Campsie’s back paddocks. Don Cane’s partner in the Philippines experienced multiple miscarriages due to his exposure to defoliants. One baby was born with multiple congenital abnormalities (see list in C2). Eventually, she left with Don’s driver. They are the parents of a healthy child at the time of composition. His thoughts turn to his own healthy sons in Sydney.

Les Hallem injuries – Penelope’s second husband, Les Hallem, has a shattered hind from a Claymore blast. It killed Bobby Horne and maimed the Rev. Lloyd Bent. Compare to Hemingway, who was wounded when a bomb exploded in the trenches in Italy. Over 200 pieces of shrapnel penetrated his right leg and foot. Link also to Oedipus, Byron et al.

Don Cane in Sydney – his destination is the Crest Hotel, Kings Cross. It was budget accommodation in the Bohemian district adjacent to Sydney CBD.

Songs – the taxi driver’s cassette features songs of a type that Don Cane has never experienced – Crazy Dan by Scratch Acid, Ride by feedtime, Black Star by Salamander Jim, We Don’t Need Freedom by Angry Samoans.

On torture in war – The acronym, ARVN, stood for Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Con Son is to an island off the southern tip of Vietnam where prisoners were shackled in “tiger cages” and tortured. “Cut off the testes stickem in his gob send a snapshot home” describes a blasphemy-against-the-male-body common in war. Conversation shifts to Rugby League due to television replay.

 

Table 8. Rugby League References 

Text Meaning
How the Berries? Canterbury-Bankstown RLFC, founded 1935. Nicknamed the Berries (abbrev. of ‘Canterbury’) from the 1940s onwards
They’re called Bulldogs now Nickname changed in 1978. This error indicates that Don Cane has been out of Australia.
Just won the Giltinan Shield The J.J. Giltinan Shield is an Australian rugby league trophy, awarded annually to the National Rugby League premiers.
Second time in five years The Bulldogs win in 1890 and 1984.
We were crap when I left. St George had won seven premierships straight. This comment indicates that Don Cane left Australia between September 1962 and September 1933, when the Grand Final is played. St. George had won their seventh consecutive premiership in 1962. Canterbury finished 6th that year.
They got to eleven. We stopped them in Sixty-Seven. Kandos Ryan was coach. But we lost to Souths in the grand final St. George won their 11th consecutive premiership in 1966. In 1967, Canterbury-Bankstown beat them 12-11 in the preliminary final, bringing their reign to an end. Captain-coach on that day was Kevin Ryan, who had transferred from St George at the end of 1966. Souths defeated Canterbury 12-10 in the Grand Final.

 

Don Cane shook his head. Relief of Odysseus when he heard the local dialect. Sexually-provocative lyrics are employed as images for Don’s relationship with Helen Capri (see Table 8).

 

Table 9. Sexual References in the Blues

Text Meaning
Fat cabbage awful hot “He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot”, Empty Bed Blues, Bessie Smith. Next line: “When he put in the bacon it overflowed the pot”. Popular food metaphors for female genitalia included cabbage, cake, jellyroll, and pie while bacon, hambone, hot dog, jellybean, and lemon were used for men
one-eyed cat peeping at a fish store Shake Rattle’n’Roll by Charles. F. Calhoun
jam-jelly rolls “You’ll miss the way I bake your jelly-roll,” Oh Daddy Blues by Bessie Smith
you with your fooling / see what you’re doing Oh Daddy Blues
You’ll curse the day when you were untrue to me Oh Daddy Blues

 

Penelope singing “Japanese Sandman” in bed rubbing castor oil on her half-term gut. This was a song my mother used to sing to me in bed. Lyrics by Raymond B. Egan. There is a poignant analogue with my mother’s circumstances in the opening phrases – “there’s a lady with a baby of Japan, singing lullabies. Hear her as she sighs.” Don Cane was the one creeping out in the dew in a variation of the actual lyrics:

Here’s the Japanese Sandman sneaking on with the dew /

Just an old second-hand man, he’ll buy your old day from you.

 

“He’ll bury the old day, sell you new stuff” is a variant of:

There’s the Japanese Sandman, trading silver for gold /

Just an old second-hand man trading new days for old.

Odysseus abandoned the plough, leaving random furrows in the field and went with Palamedes. Joyce connects Asculum to Ireland and Pyrrhus to Britain.

Conclusion on Ulysses thus far – Chapter I is too short; an unsatisfying gambit; a bit stuck on Joyce’s juvenilia; most read and re-read portion by readers because they give up; a sequence of clever notebook entries connected by Anglo-Irish enmity; a masterpiece of under-the-counter symbols charged with emanation. Joyce challenged readers to grind past his mawkish pastiche of teenage angst on the outskirts of Dublin. He was still working out his ultimate mode. Joyce could have commenced Ulysses with “Ineluctable modality of the visible.” It would have been a great start. Ulysses as a form is much greater than its parts by the end. Insert self-reference. This first part of the novel was the last drafted. The endpoint of an interminable siege. Stream of consciousness just kind of starts around this point in Ulysses. Its introspection drives the rest of the text. My intent in C2 is to show Telemachus and Athena together. Joyce diverged from Homer in this respect. He kept SD alone. Tom Hallem is exploited by his mentor, who represents a goddess in terms of power over his career. Don Cane never stopped wandering at any point after he left home in 1962. “Does Penelope miss me? Helen long to kiss me?” he asks. Penelope NO. Helen MAYBE. He had no stomach for reflection. Ritual parasites litter Ulysses. Emblems of Dublin. Bobby Horne’s death was said to be down the tunnels near Saigon is the Cu Chi tunnels (c.1966). This is a precursor of Ana’s death down the Lake in Chapter Ten. His father got killed in a car crash. This is what Penelope told people about the absence of Don Cane.

On the Telemachiad of Homer – the Telemachiad appears like a minor journey, especially when you consider the extent of Odysseus’ travels. But the reader isn’t aware of this comparison at the start of the Odyssey. Telemachus is introduced as the central character. Nothing is known of his father yet.

Military strategy during the siege of Troy – Achaean strategy refers to the tactics of Agamemnon. It suggests similarities to Field-Marshall Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in WW1. He was known as The Butcher of the Somme.

Pelian armour – Peleus gave the young Achilles his ash spear at Aulis.

Phi-hellenism – a movement advocating Greek Independence. Colombanus was an Irish missionary at the turn of the 6th Century AD.

The chastening example of Orestes – Orestes took revenge on his mother Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, for the murder of his father, Agamemnon. His example both inspired and daunted Telemachus.

Conclusions of Stephen Dedalus in Chapter I – he reaches two vital conclusions at the end of Chapter I: (a) no to Martello ever again; and (b) no to back home. He will countermand the second decision in fifteen hours and go back to his biological father.

On the end of the Telemachus episode in Ulysses – Joyce ends with the word, ‘usurper,’ out on its own as a single word paragraph. It is the only time Joyce uses this word in the whole novel. END