Proteus

Ophelia, by Sir John Everett Millais, 1851

Stephen’s sad wandering along the shore is a lonely read. He reminisces on youthful ambitions of writing and longs for human connection. Whenever I read this chapter, I find myself completely unable to relate to his sense of isolation. I haven’t been alone in years. The only analogous experience I have would be traveling out of town for work and wandering around an unfamiliar city alone. Dining alone. Sleeping in a hotel room alone. I MISS THIS SO MUCH! But I digress.

A quote that stood out to me on this reading is “I am. A stride at a time” (U.31; 3.11). I shall think on this during power walks. A stride at a time.

Stephen reflects on drowning, on the man who recently drowned, thinking about drowning himself, and on how he could not save his mother. He says that drowning is a kind death: “Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to man” (U.42; 3.482).

Is it true? Is drowning a peaceful death? I tried to find sources on this. I found a surprising number of Reddit posts on drowning. Many of the descriptions of near-drowning there did not sound mild or gentle to me. One poster mentioned water-boarding, a torture so cruel it was banned by the Obama administration. If drowning is so peaceful, why would a form of torture be based on the sensation of drowning? (Not surprisingly, Trump tried but failed to bring back waterboarding). I think Stephen was wrong.

Some facts about drowning:

• Ten people die each day from unintentional drowning, and on average 2 of them are under age 14.
• Drowning is responsible for more deaths among children ages one to four than any other cause except birth defects
• Drowning is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide, accounting for 7% of all injury-related deaths.
• There are an estimated 236 000 annual drowning deaths worldwide.
• Global estimates may significantly underestimate the actual public health problem related to drowning.
• Children, males and individuals with increased access to water are most at risk of drowning.
• Drowning in salt water usually takes longer. When a drowning person inhales salt water, the salt concentration in lungs increases. It is then that water from blood rushes into the lungs to dilute the salt water. As a result, the blood thickens. When the blood thickens, heart comes under pressure and causes cardiac arrest. This takes about 8-10 minutes. This is why it is easier to rescue people drowning in salt water like sea or ocean because rescuers get enough time to prevent cardiac arrest by hydrating with fresh water.
• Real signs of drowning (as opposed to thrashing about and yelling “save me!!!”
  • Head low in the water, with mouth at water level
  • Head tilted back, mouth open (a child’s head may fall forward)
  • Body vertical in the water
  • Eyes glassy, unfocused, or closed
  • Hair over eyes or face
  • Hyperventilating, gasping, or not breathing
  • Trying to swim but making no headway
  • Trying to roll over on back

Sources: https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/types-of-emergencies/water-safety/drowning-prevention-and-facts.html; https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drowning; https://factslegend.org/15-interesting-drowning-facts/; https://beprepared.com/blogs/articles/the-real-signs-of-drowning

Summer swimming season is here. Be safe!

Proteus

Proteus is all about Stephen walking alone along Sandymount strand and contemplating life and death. I was doing same this week, (well, minus the strolling along the shore part), as my father had a medical emergency complicated by the global pandemic and the (needed) restrictions on visitation and being able to help. He is now recovering in a rehabilitation facility, regaining his strength and balance. He shouldn’t need an ashplant when he gets out.

Now that my dad is stable on on the road to recovery, It’s time to jump into Calypso! Being in Bloom’s head will be fun after Stephen’s broodiness and focus on the death of a parent.

Episode 3: Proteus – “The Allwombing Tomb”

Sandymount Strand

In episode three, Stephen Dedalus walks alone on Sandymount strand, unable to see well because he lost his glasses.  He tells the reader that we will be seeing through his eyes (with their blurry vision):

INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO MORE, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane.

In Stephen’s seemingly aimless, visionless wandering, he muses on life and death.  He sees a pair of midwives, reminding him of his own birth:

They came down the steps from Leahy’s terrace prudently, Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife’s bag, the other’s gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool.

“Frauenzimmer,” by the way, is a German slang term for women that is mildly derogatory, like “wenches.”  Is the use of the term “ruddy” in describing the the misbirth Stephen imagines being in the midwife’s bag a foreshadowing of Rudy Bloom, the son of Leopold and Molly, who died as an infant?

Stephen’s thoughts of his birth of course lead to thoughts about his mother’s death:

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath.

Stephen thinks about his prayers to the Virgin Mary for, among other things, the sight of unclothed women:

Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain: naked women! What about that, eh?

What about what? What else were they invented for?

Is Stephen asking what else prayers were invented for, or women?

Stephen is exceedingly lonely and depressed.  He watches a couple of cocklepickers walking by him and imagines them together:

Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face her hair trailed. Behind her lord, his helpmate, bing awast, to Romeville. When night hides her body’s flaws calling under her brown shawl from an archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O’Loughlin’s of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogue’s rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell. A shefiend’s whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally’s lane that night: the tanyard smells.

Passing now.

A side-eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te veniet. He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth’s kiss.

Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss. No. Must be two of em. Glue ’em well. Mouth to her mouth’s kiss.

His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her womb. Oomb, allwombing tomb.

Stephen reflects on lost loves, death, his poverty, his rotting teeth, and his few prospects.  Life and death seem one and the same: the allwombing tomb.

 

 

Chapter 3: Proteus

Proteus, or, The Sad Hamlet Emo Chapter a/k/a This is Hard to Read!

Sandymount Strand, from The Joyce Project

Proteus begins thus:

“Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.  Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.  Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs.”

So, Stephen is telling us that we will be seeing through his eyes.  But are we really seeing through his eyes?  Again, Stephen describes his stroll on Sandymount Strand, now alone, through sound more than sight.  He even shuts his eyes:

“Shut your eyes and see.
Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells.”

I am getting along nicely in the dark.  My ash sword hangs at my side.  Tap with it:  they do.”

“Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: sesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos.  Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks.  In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels.  And, spent, its speech ceases.  It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.”

Stephen is walking blind.  James Joyce had failing eyesight and endured several eye operations while writing Ulysses.

This chapter, to me, is all about Stephen being a sad Hamlet figure walking along the beach, alone.  Kind of an emo scene, really.

Some dark quotes from Stephen:

“Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten.  By them, the man with my voice and eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath.”

“A drowning man.  His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his death.  I… With him together down… I could not save her.  Waters: bitter death: lost.”

On seeing a dog approach a dog carcass on the beach:

“Hot stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffing rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal.  Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.”

Me sits there with his augur’s rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars.”

Touch me.  Soft eyes.  Soft soft soft hand.  I am lonely here.  O, touch me soon, now.  What is that word known to all men?  I am quiet here alone.  Sad, too.  Touch, touch me.”

On recalling a man who drowned near where he is sitting:

“God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead.  Hauled stark over the gunwhale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.”

Stephen spends time thinking about his dead mother, a dead dog, lost loves, a brief homosexual encounter with a schoolmate, and a drowned man.  He wallows in his poverty–he is wearing secondhand clothes, his teeth are rotting.  Buck Mulligan had called him “poor dogsbody” back at the tower, and Stephen relates to the poor dead dog on the beach.

Plot points:  we are reminded of the letter Stephen needs to take to the newspaper and we are reminded that Stephen does not have his house key (Buck Mulligan has it.)

A little foreshadowing:

Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me.  All days make their end.”

The end of Stephen’s day will be significant.