EPISODE 4

Calypso

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and

fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart,

liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he

liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of

faintly scented urine.” (U4.1)

Leopold – Means “the people’s prince” and

implies birth under the “constellation of the

Northern Crown” the sign of ambition,

beauty, dignity, empire, eternal life, glory,

good fortune, history, honor, judgement,

and the female principal.

“They call them stupid. They understand what we say better

than we understand them. She understands all she wants to.”

(U4.26)

“When I play with my cat,

who knows but that she

regards me more as a

plaything than I do her?”

–Michel de Montaigne

“She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing

plaintively and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He

watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes

were green stones.” (U4.33)

“All the way from Gibraltar, Forgotten any little Spanish she

knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes! of

course. Bought it at the governor’s auction. Got a short knock.”

(U4.60)

Molly Bloom

was born and

brought up in

Gibraltar.

Presumably

Molly and her

father moved to

Dublin in May

or June of 1886.

“Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now

that was farseeing.” (U4.64)

Tweedy, a stamp collector, had

apparently bought up all available

copies of an unusual stamp

before the stanp was recognized

as valuable.

“The sun was nearing the steeple of George’s church.” (U4.78)

St. George’s church is an

Anglican church. It was

designed by architect Francis

Johnston to whom Dublin

also owes the General Post

Office and the renovated

Viceregal Lodge.

“Boland’s breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers

yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot.” (U4.82)

After the Lord’s

Prayer, “Give us

this day our daily

bread.”

A period

advertisement for

Boland’s Bread.

Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible,

seated crosslegged smoking a coiled pipe.” (U4.89)

Turko the

terrible - A

pantomime

popular in

Dublin and a

character in

that

pantomime

“Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of those instruments what do

you call them: dulcimers. I pass. Probably not a bit like it really.

Kind of stuff you read: In the track of the sun. Sunburst on the

titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself.” (U4.97)

In the track of the sun –

Frederick Diodati Thompson, In

the Track of the Sun: Diary of a

Globe Trotter. Thompson traveled

west from New York and

returned via England. Thompson

concentrates on his travels in the

Orient and the Near East, as

Bloom’s reverie suggests.

“What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the

Freeman leader: a homerule sun rising up in the northwest from

the laneway behind the bank of Ireland. He prolonged his

pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in the

northwest. (4.101)

The Freeman’s Journal and National

Press, a daily morning newspaper

in Dublin was editorially pro-

Home Rule but essentially

moderate-conservative in its

point of view.

“He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar grating floated up

the flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar

squirted out whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house,

however: just the end of the city traffic. For instance M’Auley’s down

there: n.g. as position.” (U4.105)

Larry O’Rouke’s –

Laurence O’Rourke,

grocer and tea, wine,

and spirit merchant.

“The Russians, they’d only be an eight o’clock breakfast for

the Japanese.” (U4.116)

O’Rourke’s prediction of

the outcome of the Russo-

Japanese War, while a little

too pro-Japanese, was not

entirely inaccurate. The

Japanese had much shorter

supply lines than the

Russians; they also enjoyed

naval and military

superiority.

“Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters

or DanTallons.” (U4.127)

Adam Findlaters – Tea,

wine, and spirit and

provision merchants.

"How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten

barrels of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. Or more. Fifteen. He passed

Saint Joseph's National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air

helps memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue

rustyouvee doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk, Inishark.

Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom." (U4.134)Sait Joseph’s National School –

The National Schools weere the

Irish counterpart of the

American public schools,

although they bore more

resemblance to trade or

vocational schools because their

emphasis was on practical

education for the working and

lower middle classes.

"He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of

sausages, polonies, black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The

figures whitened in his mind, unsolved: displeased, he let them

fade." (U4.140)

A polony sausage is

made of partially

cooked pork and thus

looks mottled, black

and white.

“The model farm at Kinnerethon the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can

become ideal winter sanatorium.” (U4.154)

The farm was founded

and advertised by the

Palestine Land

Development Company

to train Jewish workers

and to prove that a farm

employing Jewish workers

could be profitable.

"Moses Montefiore. I thought he was." (U4.156)

Sir Moses Haim

Montefiore became a

wealthy English

philanthropist who used

his influence and wealth to

secure political

emancipation of Jews in

England, to alleviate

Jewish suffering elsewhere

in Europe, and to

encourage the

colonization of Palestine.

"They like them sizeable. Prime sausage." (U4:178)

The minimum height requirement for the Dublin

Metropolitan Police in 1904 was fie feet nine inches, well

above the stature of the ordinary Dubliner.

"To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant

with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction.

Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay

eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with olives,

oranges, almonds or citrons." (U4.192)

Palestine was part of the

Turkish empire from 1516

until the end of World War

I.

"Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa." (U4.194)

Jaffa – A seaport in Palestine

"You pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you

with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper:

oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending

of the crop. Your name entered for life as owner in the book

of the union. Can pay ten down and the balance in yearly

installments.” (U4.194)

The offer is that the company

of planters will buy the land

for an investor or prospective

settler, plant, and harvest for

him, and ship him a portion

of the crop as a return on his

investment.

"On earth as it is in heaven.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.

No, not like that." (U4.217)

From the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy

kingdom come. Thy will be done

in earth, as it is in heaven.”

"Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the

earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy

waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the

plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a

dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race."

(U4.219)

In the mid-nineteenth

century, the Dead Sea

was assumed to occupy

the giant crater of a

dead or inactive volcano.

"Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again those

Sandow's exercises.” (U4.233)

Eugene Sandow, a strong

man who advertised

hiself as capable of

transforming the puny

into the mighty. Bloom’s

bookshelf contains a

copy of his book Physical

Strength and How to Obtain

it. It includes a program

of exercises and a chart

for recording

measurements, as Bloom

apparently did.

"Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley Road, swiftly in

slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet

me, a girl with gold hair on the wind." (U4.240)

As the cloud moves eastward on the

prevailing westerly wind, sunlight

moves along Eccles Street toward

Bloom, and he has a momentary vision

of his blond daughter, Milly, running

to greet him.

"- What are you singing?

- Là ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet

Song." (U4.313)

La ci darem la mano, Italian: “Then

we’ll go hand in hand” a duet in Act

I, scene iii, of Mozart’s opera Don

Giovanno

"He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she

pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down.

He stooped and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled

against the bulge of the orangekeyed chamberpot." (U4.327)

Voglio e non vorrei – Italian: “I want to

and I wouldn’t like to.” Bloom misquotes

Zerlina’s line from the duet in Don

Giovanni.

"Families of them. Bone them young so they metamspychosis. That

we live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after he dies,

Dignam's soul..." (U4.351)

In circus tradition,

children of trapeze

acrobats are intensively

trained from a very

early ago.

"In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it

under his armpit, went to the door and opened it." (U4.467)

Titbits from All the Most

Interesting Books, Periodicals and

Newspapers in the World, a

sixteen page penny-weekly.

Some historians of

journalism suggest that

modern popular journalism

was born with the first issue

of Titbits in 1881.

"Hope it's not too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah!

Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada." (U4.509)

Cascara Sagrada – Spanish:

literally, “sacred bark.” A

mild laxative made from the

bark of the buckthorn tree.