Vv “ULYSSES”: A MONOLOGUE PICASSO.ULYSSES": A MONOLOGUE * Ma The Ulysses nf my title has to do with James Joyce and noe wit chat shrewd and stormdriven figure of Homer's world who knew how to escape by guile and wily deeds the enmity and ven ‘geance of gods and men, and who ater a wearisome voyage re furned to hearth and home, Joyce’ Ulysses, very much unlike his ancient namesike, is 4 pasive, merely perceiving conscious. ress, a mere eye, ear, noxe, and mouth, a sensory nerve exposed ‘without choice or check to the roaring, chaotic, anaticeataract Of paychic and physical gppenings, and registering all this with lmoxt phovageaphie acura. ve” "Uyises is 4 book that pours along for seven thirty-five pages. a stream of time seven hundred and days long which all consist in one single and senscless day in the life of every man, the completely irrelevant sixteenth day of Jane, s9o4. in Dublin-—a day on which, in all truth, nothing happens. The stream begins inthe void and endo inthe void. I all this perhaps one single, immensely Tong, and excesively fer the pees of ti ay, ee apt, nt Tas pub inte Exopsche Revs (ery Vten Ceple1ye, spinel Mok te dr Sete ai gh Tere Seay Den Sing New Yon oe a hina tenn, (Jone Ae gg, ch taton mh ato he res vero [he quote ttn lacy nen acta with the ah plating (Pat gts copy of ws Jong wnt ted, tough sey at, pa "Sia sen tr aon ef patinn gees] cain spear inthe Etape Bote, et» wee wee 1 ‘mene than my epee Pica Ihave inca Hl the prevent voluine ‘Siew ha kyr lot maa hen a 109‘complicated Serindbergian pronouncement upon the essence of human life—a prorouncement which, tothe reader's dismay, is never finished? Posily it does touch upon the exence, but quite certainly ie vellece lifes ten thousand facets and their hhundred thousand gradators of colour. So fa as T ean se, there are in those seven hundred and thirty-five pages no obvious rep- clitions, not a single blesed island where the long-suffering feaider may come (0 rest; no place where he can seat himself, ‘drunk with memories, and contemplate with satisfaction the stretch of road he has covered, be icone hundred pages or even less. If only he could spot some little commonplace that had obligingly slipped in again where it was not expected! But no! ‘The pitiless steam rolls on without a break, and is velocity or viscosity increases inthe last forty pages til ie sweeps away even the puretuation marks, Here the siforating empiness becomes So unbearably tense that it reaches the bursting point. This ut terly hopeless emptines isthe dominant note ofthe whole book. Ienot only begins and ends in nothingnes, it consists of nothing Dut nothingness? Te is all infernally nugatory. As 2 piece of technical vireuosiy ii brilliant and hellish monster birth Thad an uncle whose thinking was always direct and to the point, One day he stopped me on the street and demanded: “Do You know how the devil tortures the souls in hell?" When I said ho, he replied: "He keeps them waiting.” And with that he vealed away. This remark accurred to me when I was ploughing through Ulysses for the fst time, Every sentence roses ex pectation that isnot fulfled: finally, out of sheer resi you come to expect nothing, and 40 your horror it gradually ‘dawns on you that you have hit the mark, Tn actual fact nothing hhappens, nothing comes of it all and yet a seeret expectation batting with hopeles resignation drags the reader from page 10 page. ‘The seven hundred and thirty-five pages that contain 24 Joe lt or neces in ion "Me ay oe i ca [48 nga Wake gp, agents we pala 9h der the tie are Progr he moty apie anion an ee she“ q eit ese wd th as ges “Lain fk wo care ie, po “A maps iH he tan of Joe nothing by wo means consist of blank paper but are closly printed. You read and read and read and you pretend to under ‘and what you read. Occasionally you drop through an air pocket into 2 new sentence, but once the proper degree of tesig ‘ation has been reached you get accustomed to anything. Thus T read to page 135 with despair in my hear, falling asleep twice fon the way. The incredible versatility of Joye’ style has a mo- hotoneus and hypnotic effect Nothing comes to. meet the reader, everything turns away from him, leaving him gaping alter i. The book is always up and away, dissatisfied with itself jronic, sardonic, virulent, contemptuous, sad, despairing, and biter. Ie plays on the reader's sympathies to his own undoing unless sleep kindly intervenes and puts a stop to this drain of energy. Arrived at page 135, after making several heroic efforts toget at the book, to do it justice,” as the phrase goes, I fell at last into profound slumber? When T awoke quite 4 while later, ‘my views had undergone such a clarification that T stated ¢0 ‘ead the book backwards. This method proved as good as the ‘ual one; the book can just as well be rea backwards, for it has hho back and no front, no top and no bottom. Everything could easily have happened before, or might have happened after “wards You can read any of the conversations just as pleasi- ably backwards, or you don’t mise the point of the gage. Every fenterce i a gag, but taken together they make no point. You fan also top in the middle of a sentence—the fit half still makes sense enough to live by ise, or at Teast seems to, The sp ot pg mee a ae ei oe sh ay ite re oe ye le ing Tf Mew od wot he et He Tie "tng lennon tin of thought whe osama woul ol have Teane ante “cer curing ee a crechaapog fr, peered ns Io abioe ai Able Ue. ablae space” ewe Scheer Tena p60)