This, being the middle of the book, made me both content and anxious. Though I am excited that I have gotten thus far in reading such an important piece of literature, I am terrified that I still have half the book to read. But god be praised. The bridging chapter was not a tuffy. As like some of the chapters we have seen in the past. This one was a walk in the park, or a walk in Dublin for that matter. I saw this chapter really as a breath of fresh air. Coincidently “The Wandering Rocks” is an episode in the Odyssey where Ulysses avoids an inescapable violence. So, at the end of the chapter I sort of felt like Ulysses having just dodged an esoteric bullet.

On another topic, the text. I found one passage in particular to be quite illuminating, where Haines and Mulligan are talking about Steven and how he will never become a poet. “They drove his wits astray, he said [Buck Mulligan], by visions of hell.” “Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly.” (p.249) Mulligan and Haines agree that it is Stevens religious upbringing that keeps him from his poetic destiny. I agree with this completely. Steven lacks emotional experience. Like Faust, who lived in the book, by the book, Steven needs to take a step into reality. He needs to feel love and heartbreak. Steven needs to walk in Blooms shoes.

If (as I rant about in the previous entry) Bloom mirrors the gluttonous and sexual (physical) half of Faust, the other, academic character of Faust reminds us of Steven.
“Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast, and one is striving to forsake its brother. Unto the world in grossly loving zest, with clinging tendrils, one adheres; the other rises forcibly in quest of rarified ancestral spheres.” (Faust lines, 1110-1117)
The above quote from Faust outlines the duality of his character as well as the juxtaposition of Bloom and Steven. Faust, on the one hand, desires the physical world. But, on the other hand, pursues the world of knowledge. In the last chapter we discussed in class, Scylla and Charybdis, the latter half of Faust’s character (the academic) is shown through Steven.

The first part of the chapter is a discussion of Hamlet. One opens up the chapter by describing the “ineffectual dreamer”. “The ineffectual dreamer who come to grief against hard facts. One always feels that Goethe’s judgments are so true. True in their larger analysis” (p.184) Hamlet was, no doubt about it, an ineffectual dreamer. He had his head in the books (studied abroad and was constantly contemplating life and the meaning of death). Faust, as well, can be described as the ineffectual dreamer, (at least for a time). Before Faust meets the devil, he is lost in a world of books and knowledge, which leads him nowhere. As his apprentice says to him—“Ah, when one is confined to one’s own museum and sees the world on holidays alone, but from a distance, only on occasion, how can one guide it by persuasion? (Faust lines, 528-533)” Faust, like Steven, is well acquainted with the past and with antiquity, but as his apprentice articulates; when an individual has his face and attention in a book, he can hardly know what is right in front of him.

Our Bloom, the wandering Jew, makes up half of the character Faust, in Goethe’s great play, Faust. After Faust makes the deal with the devil, on the terms that he will employ the devil to help him find satisfaction, he wanders the earth in search of a time when he can say ‘I wish to keep this moment for the rest of eternity’.
“If ever I recline, calmed, on a bed of sloth, you may destroy me then and there. If ever flattering you should wile me that in myself I find delight, if with enjoyment you beguile me, then break on me, eternal night! This is the bet I offer.” (Faust, lines 1692-1700)
Just as Ulysses wanders the earth in search of Ithaca, a place where he may be at rest and at home, Faust searches for love, for happiness, contentment, and state of mind that cures his wandering as Ithaca would cure Ulysses’. Leopold Bloom adopts this struggle and so far in the book we have seen him conduct his day similarly to the fantastical adventures of both Ulysses and Faust.
Bloom is a creature of the distraction of earthly pleasures. We meet our ‘hero’ as he stuffs his face with breakfast and (as readers) accompany him on his long list of gluttonous daily chores. This is not to say that his life is purely pleasurable, he does his share of obligations. He attends the funeral, and he goes to work (for a brief time). Bloom’s constant attraction to distraction couples him with Faust. The pursuit of happiness is easily corrupted by glutton and lascivious desire, as seen in both Faust and Ulysses (the courting of Margaret and Calypso’s island).
Bloom’s wandering (for the most part) is reified in thought. His mind wanders from thought to thought. As he moves through the day, he thinks of women and food and other earthly pleasures. At the end of chapter eight he ventures into the museum, where he goes to view the naked female form. “His heart quipped softly. To the right. Museum. Godesses. He swerved to the right.” (p.183)

Aoelus cont..
Bloom is absent almost the entire chapter, making appearances here and there. I realized that this is because he is one of the only people (if not the only person) working! Everyone else is just socializing, making fun, and going to get drinks. Besides some minor characters, such as Monk and Red Murray, Steven is also the only person who has a mind to get things done.

Bloom is trying to get an ad in the paper, something about Keyes, a grocer or merchant. I wonder if it correlates with the key that Steven has to give up to Buck Mulligan. Bloom needs to two keys (he only has one) the only other key we have seen in the novel so far is Stevens. Coincidence?

There is more dialogue in this chapter than any we have seen so far. That’s why I find it funny that it correlates with the chapter in the Odyssey about the bad winds. Everyone in this chapter seems to be blowing a lot of wind. The fact that they are also at a press office further emphasizes this idea. Many argue that the press talks a lot of nonsense (like the Post with their obnoxious head lines, which happen to be echoed throughout the chapter). On a more self-conscious level, in the Evening Telegraph Office, (p.123) Ned Lambert reads allowed a speech, mocking its ostentatious tone. “The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage.”

The motif of the flower riddles the chapter “Lotus Eaters”. In this chapter our Odysseus is supposed to have escaped calypso but still be hung up on some other island. We left off when Bloom was eating breakfast and reading the paper. This chapter starts off with him already out of the house and walking towards the funeral. Between his house and the funeral, an important but hazy event takes place when he stops by the post office and picks up a letter. The letter is addressed to a “Henry”. I assumed it was a letter sent by his wife that was sent back, or had the incorrect address on it or something. In the letter was a small yellow flour. He also pauses for some time in front of an oriental tea spot (an easy allusion to the lotus eaters). Eventually he gets to the funeral and then to a perfume store on his way to a bathhouse.

The escape of Calypso is reified by the reality of his wife’s adultery. In the previous chapter, as seen in his perspective of his daughter, Leopold didn’t want to make any moves on suspicion. Sort of like hamlet as well. Leopold thinks, in reference to his own daughters sexual promiscuousness: “O well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does.” Assuming that Leopold uses this same logic on his wife, it is only now that he would be forced to take action. Just seeing her put a letter under her pillow (for all it is worth) didn’t give him probable cause. The Lotus Eater chapter, is the chapter where Leopold wakes up to smell the roses.

Though there is a little dialogue, most of the chapter is taken up by blooms wandering thoughts (no pun intended). He thinks about his wife and the disillusionment of her adultery. He thinks about death a little. But, in regard to the drown man I found it amusing that unlike Steven, who thinks of the bloated drown corpse, Leopold thinks of a man in the dead sea who, ironically, cannot drown because of the buoyancy of the water.
Also, in reference to the father son relationship, Bloom imagines Abraham’s recognition of his son Nathan. This biblical scene is much like the one when Odysseus meets Telemachus, who thinks he is dead.

Two references to Yeats: one in Maude Gonne and the other might be a stretch but, Holohan and Houlihan. When bloom has a quick word with M’Coy, M’coy tells him that he heard about the funeral through Holohan, which sounds sort of like Houlihan.

I imagined the painting bellow by Balthus while I was reading this chapter. The painting and the chapter use the same provocation, the same symbol of the “pussens” lapping the milk. Very erotic! Everything about the chapter was dirty. The passage when Leopold goes to buy the pork kidneys, and sees the girl buying sausages made me laugh out loud. “They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr. Policeman, I’m lost in the wood.”
The juxtaposition between Leopold and Steven is nice. Especially because of Steven is so not erotic. For example in the last chapter where he says to himself, “the froeken, bone a tout faire, she said. tous les messieurs. Not this monsieur, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing… Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.”

But besides the erotic, this chapter has all to do with glutton. He is eating constantly throughout the chapter, but not just eating. Eating not to stop hunger but to taste food. Bloom experiences, in this chapter nearly all the earthly pleasures.