Notes on "Ithaca"

Homeric Parallel: Odysseus returns to "the rock of Ithaca" (as Joyce
calls it) leaving the tempetuous sea behind (see the water section:
out-Homering Homer's epic catalogues on 548-550), but facing now the task
of routing the suitors. Suitors ~ Molly's "admirers" (601-602).

Bloom/Odysseus & Stephen/Telemachus make common cause in fighting the
suitors -- is this carried over? The union remains ambiguous and
unpromising, tinged with irony (570-572).


Stylistic Considerations:

General Effect of the style -- illusion (not for the first time) of
objectivity. But this time, there is a tendency toward GENERALIZATION
and CONTEXTUALIZATION of Bloom/Stephen in a cosmic context. ABSTRACT
STATEMENTS OF RELATIONS abound (hence all of the math, geometry,
etc.).

This tendency is interrupted by recurrences of the Arranger's foolery
and by the High Style (558, 560; 573 -- the "Heaventree").

The DISTANCE of the narrative technique emphasizes the DIFFERENCE and
incommensurability of Bloom and Stephen. The catechism thus maximizes
the Pathos of the encounter.

Same old Bloom:  546, 550, 554-555, 562-563, 588; 601-604 -- Bloom's
equanimity; 605 -- Bloom's accounting of the day.


Exemplary symbolism:

547-548 -- objectivity grades into symbolism by indirection,
understatement

558 -- Blephen / Stoom

563 -- Bloom's & Stephen's common state of alienation from their
respective "racial" origins

571 -- the clown and the coin: paternity and peregrination

598 -- cosmic, symbolic generalization of Bloom as Everyman/Everywoman



Facts vs. Metaphor

Math vs. emotions


Precision of language threaten to make the characters unrecognizable
at times.