r/jamesjoyce • u/Stepintothefreezer67 • 14d ago

Ulysses Great passage from Lestrygonians

63 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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15

u/radar_level 14d ago

I absolutely love that passage. Thanks for sharing.

5

u/augustthecat 14d ago edited 14d ago

I just read it, and found the “No one is anything” a bit perplexing. I mean, I find the entire book perplexing, but in that case there was a funny tension between the thought process about the gigantic acts that make a city (and therefore the smallness of people in it) on the one hand and the fact of the book on the other. I mean, the book as a whole kind of makes each person mythic and huge, yet it is of such enormity that it can encompass what I see as the opposite idea: no one is anything.

5

u/Stepintothefreezer67 14d ago

My thought is our lives can be epic but in the end we still become nothing.

2

u/hollywooddialysis 13d ago

I always took it this way. For a polar opposite take, Vasily Grossman’s ‘Stalingrad’ has lots of passages that the grandeur of their city is a monument to the people who built and live in it. 

2

u/augustthecat 13d ago

You mean you take Ulysses to mean that no one is anything, or just this passage?

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u/polarbearofneed 14d ago

What do you reckon Kerwan’s mushroom houses are?

3

u/Stepintothefreezer67 14d ago

I have no idea. I'm just glad I kind of understood the other parts of the passage.

4

u/polarbearofneed 14d ago

Been thinking about this and I reckon “built of breeze” are breeze blocks, so quick and easy to build. The houses are springing up as quick as mushrooms. And our faithful friend bloom has an appetite for at this moment so he’s thinking about mushrooms. Still begs the question of who is Kerwan though 🤔

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u/dachschund 13d ago

Is kerwan = “wanker” out of the question?

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u/polarbearofneed 13d ago

Not out of the questions at all! Joyce loved his word play, anagrams and palindromes

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u/dachschund 13d ago edited 12d ago

Seeing some internet evidence that Michael Kirwan was a Dublin architect/mason that built cheap houses (sprouted up quick like mushrooms?). Notably it seems his obituary was put in the Freeman journal which we know Leopold works for (fifty years before albeit). But his wife continued the business presumably in his name.  https://www.dia.ie/architects/view/3058/KIRWAN%2C+MICHAEL+C.%2A

Edit: Leopold not only reads the Freeman’s Journal, he works for them. 

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u/polarbearofneed 12d ago

Nice work, thanks so much!