In the top three pictures, Stephen looks out to sea while Mulligan goes down the stairs, reciting  a Yeats poem.  In the bottom two frames, a voice–presumably inside Stephen’s head, mashes together the poem and his perception of the sea.  It’s another example of the “Uncle Charles Principle,” where a voice that is ostensibly the narrator’s takes on the personality and knowledge of an individual character.

Also important to note that if we are inside Stephen’s head here, at least partly, that Stephen is beginning to work on a poem. His mind has left the conflict with Mulligan and has begun to shape, to try to capture in words, a visual impression.

The reference to “lightshod hurrying feet” sounds like a reference to the god Mercury, who, in the Odyssey, is described several times as running over the surface of the ocean with his winged sandals, on his way to deliver messages to mortals.

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Mulligan has finished shaving, and has lost the skirmish with Stephen, so he heads back downstairs.  In telling Stephen to quit his “moody brooding,” he triggers in Stephen’s mind a memory of the days at the end of his mother’s life.  Instead of praying with his mother at the time of her death, Stephen sings the W. B. Yeats poem “Who Goes with Fergus.”  The line from that poem “And no more turn aside and brood.” occurs to him all day.

“Chuck Loyola” is notthe name of another friend, but is rather Mulligan’s request to Stephen to leave behind his Jesuitical rigidity (the Jesuit order was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola) and get over it.

“Sassenach” is a Scots word for Englishman–it’s derived from the word “saxon.”

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In a comment on the last drawing, Josh wrote:

Yes indeed.  Maybe this is a good moment to go back to the Odyssey, where Athena appears to young Telemachus to tell him that he must leave his house, which is filled with usurpers, and to go out into the world to find out what happened to his father.  Homer doesn’t really discuss it, but it seems Telemachus could have chosen to  attach himself to one or more of his mother’s suitors… he could have allowed himself to become coopted by them.  It would have been tempting to do so–it would be similarly tempting for Stephen to sign on with Mulligan’s vision of Ireland’s cultural future.  But he can’t, and in this reading, it seems clearer to me that what has happened overnight is that Stephen has realized that Mulligan really has no vision of his own, but has been preying on others the whole time.

Rob’s presentation of the scene requires no commentary–when I first saw it I thought again of the old Spy vs. Spy cartoons…

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If you didn’t already know that Mulligan was a medical student, here he proves it.  He doesn’t understand why Stephen is so offended by his “beastly dead” comment.  I suspect most readers are also a little confused by this–or at least about why Stephen has been holding on to it for so long.

You get (at the bottom of the page) a classic Stephenism–that he is not upset about the insult to his mother, but rather “of the offence to me.”

What does Stephen mean by this, and why is it coming out now?  On the simplest level, Stephen is perhaps as offended by Mulligan referring to him as “only Dedalus” as he is about his mother being “beastly dead.”  Further, if Mulligan respected Stephen, or saw him as a social equal, or saw him as the promising artist Stephen sees himself to be… he wouldn’t have said that.  It’s another small detail that shows you how Mulligan’s interest in Stephen is insincere.  The anecdote also serves to deflate, or put into context, Mulligan’s invitation to go to Greece.  I think Stephen also is offended because his mother’s death is such a huge presence in his present life–he might like to escape his fixation on it, but as we’ve already seen, the experience still haunts him.

So who was Sir Peter Teazle?  First,  a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s School for Scandal, a hugely popular play from the late 1700s.  Second,  a prize racehorse!  I had no idea about that second one, but it’s a nice Ulyssean fit.

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Stephen, disenchanted with the prospect of the new Hellenistic “omphalos” at the tower, airs a major grievance with Mulligan.  He seems unaware of or just uninterested in the ironic contrast between his highminded observation of mourning proprieties plus his sensitivity towards Mulligan’s crudeness, against his own refusal to follow her last wishes.  Of course, this isn’t lost on Mulligan.

I’m hoping for some commentary on Mulligan’s line about remembering “only ideas and sensations.”  The Gifford note on this doesn’t seem to be especially helpful–it talks about David Hartley & John Locke.  I associate the language with Walt Whitman, but for no good reason…

This scene sort of like Festivus–there’s a pole, there’s the airing of grievances… no feats of strength, but there will be swimming soon.

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