Ulysses Annotated

September 23, 2008

Ulysses Annotated is a great resource when tackling Joyce’s densely allusive novel, but in some ways it is almost as unwieldy as Ulysses itself! If you make it through the lengthy, but immensely useful introduction– which is generally concerned with providing adequate context of Ireland in general and Dublin in particular in 1904 but delves deep into some useful minutiae including monetary values– you are then confronted with more than 600 packed pages of detailed annotations. In addition to providing, for each section, information from that section of The Odyssey and quite detailed information about the scene in that section, you also get notes about the technique, predominant color, symbols, and character and place correspondences both directly and those that are not specifically specified (did I say that?) but present according to the Linati schema.

The introduction explains that the authors tried to avoid "common" definitions, things that are expected to be understood by the average reader, unnecessary detail, and interpretation… but these are subjective elements.

For instance, the last line of the third book:

Moving through the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.

Is explained with typically high detail and noted as a biblical allusion:

The schooner Rosevean, announced in "Shipping News," Freeman’s Journal, 16 June 1904, as "from Bridgewater with bricks"; see 10.1098-99 and 16.450-51. Bridgewater is just west of Bristol in southwestern England; it was well known for its manufacture of Bath bricks (scouring bricks used to clean knives and polish metal). The three "crosstrees" recall Calvary Hill, where Jesus was crucified: "Then were two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left" (Matthew 27:38).

Which is fascinating, but probably unnecessary detail in the first part and a bit of a stretch in the second. There are any number of uses of the word "three" and any number of historical references that they could be alluding to. Unless Joyce is more explicit or explains it somewhere else, annotations like this are a bit far afield.

Likewise, this fragment:

The warmth of her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea

Is annotated:

In The Odyssey, as Hermes approaches Calypso’s cave: "Upon her hearthstone a great fire blazing / scented the farthest shores with cedar smoke / and smoke of thyme, and singing high and low / in her sweet voice, before her loom a-weaving"

Which is a reasonable link but not one that I’m sure is sure enough to warrant inclusion, the only literal connection being scent, but not the same scent (one is Molly Bloom’s body and her tea, the other is Calypso’s fire).

In the main, I appreciate this level of detail. It’s amazing to see how many pretty coarse details of plot and person I missed the first time around! But as a consequence I’m only now– about 100 pages into Ulysses– starting to get into a rhythm for using the annotations without killing the reading experience. Trying to pay attention to, and absorb, every annotation is too much. I’ve settled into a routine of skimming a few pages of annotations, then reading those pages, making notes of areas of confusion, to which I return before skimming the next section. On the one hand, this takes away some of the thrill of actually recognizing a reference or allusion or other detail on my own (it becomes hard to be sure if I’d have recognized some of the allusions that seem quite familiar), but it does seem to be the least intrusive in terms of just enjoying the musicality and inventiveness of Joyce’s prose.

Tags: james joyce, reading, ulysses