Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Poem for Tuesday and James Joyce Tower

From 'Telemachus' (Ulysses I) 
By James Joyce 

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide. 

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My Tuesday was a lot like my Monday, since I had an ophthalmologist appointment in Bellevue after lunch (all tests today, will go over them with the doctor next week). It was overcast most of the day, but we barely got drizzle when we were out, even walking to the beach and out on the dock, now that the geese, ducks, and eagles are back in numbers for the fall. Our neighborhood had a visiting taco truck, and we chatted with neighbors but ended up not getting food because the wait was long. 

My Voyager group watched "Lineage" which started with an interesting premise but was horribly written in terms of the characters. The Yankees were already beating the Guardians by the time we finished, and before the end of the ninth inning, we had put on Lonely Planet, which has an uneven script and underdeveloped characters, but Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth are enjoyable in it and Morocco is beautiful. Here is James Joyce Tower, with explanations in the comments:

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"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." 

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"Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains."

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Those lines are from the opening paragraphs of Ulysses, set on the roof of this tower. This is the first edition currently at the tower museum, published by Sylvia Beach after it was serialized in The Little Review

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This is the living area of the tower, where Joyce himself lived as a guest of his friend Oliver St. John Gogarty. 

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Joyce departed very abruptly after an incident in which Richard Trench, who was also staying with Gogarty, woke after a nightmare about a panther and fired his handgun, leading to bullets ricocheting off the pots and pans over where Joyce was sleeping.

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Joyce described the dark, smoky room in the tower in Ulysses and wrote a character based on Trench in the novel. 

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"The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters."

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