Blessed Virgins (10 of 783)

When we last left Kinch (aka Stephen, aka Dedalus) on page 9,  he was remembering his mother's secret possessions. On page 10 he continues this by recalling her memories, including the performance of an actor named Royce whose songs as Turko the Terrible caused her to laugh.  He laments how memories are "folded away" and falls into his memories of her, finishing with "her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts."

Kinch then recalls a dream where his mother visited him "to shake and bend my soul" and "to strike me down", which ends in our Latin challenge of the day...

"Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat."

Google Translate makes an, um, interesting attempt...

"Liliata glimmering confessors you surround company: jubilant chorus girls you pick."

As much fun as it would be to pick chorus girls, especially jubilant ones, it does not seem to fit with the passage. Fortunately there is a more apt translation at lindblommedia.com...

"May the crowd of joyful confessors encompass thee; may the choir of blessed virgins go before thee."

That sounds suitably more Catholic. I believe Kinch is wishing his mother a happy welcome to heaven.  She rejoins by calling him "Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!" He responds "Let me be and let me live."  It's clear that there was some conflict in their relationship over his profession, and he's tired of being troubled by this even after her death.

A multitude of colors and shades in Kinch's memories of his mother: the dark of autumn, the brown sugar, and the reddened fingernails.  The dream is dominated by smells: the odour of wax and rosewood followed by the faint odour of wetted ashes.

Very curious why Kinch's mother had a glass of kitchen tap water after approaching the sacrament and why it was as memorable as the roasting apple.  Was she washing the sacred out with the ordinary, or did the host simply make her thirsty?

Buck Mulligan interrupts Kinch's reverie with with a call that breakfast was ready. Still shaken by his thoughts of his mother, Kinch heard "warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words" and turned to the warmth of breakfast. The page ends with Buck once again telling Kinch he told Haines of Kinch's "symbol of Irish Art", which Haines found very clever and Kinch should touch him for a quid.

It is finally time for breakfast and to turn the page.

This Ain't No Julie & Julia

While blogging one's way through Julia Child's recipes turned out to be film worthy, there is no way that slogging through Ulysses page-by-page will ever make it to Netflix download near you.  If, however, by some strange fluctuation of spacetime it does -- I think Amy Adams should play both me and James Joyce. That would be the only way to get the film made. I'd watch it. Of course, I'd probably watch Amy Adams read a cookbook for two hours...

Ahem. 

I left this blog fallow for six, Six, SIX, SIX years, but someone left a comment on it today (a real comment! -- one that wasn't spam for off brand anti-virus software), so I felt I should at least dust it off for the day.

Not sure this will be a permanent resurrection, or one last breath before dying. On the one hand, if I had kept going in the first place, I would have finished this four years ago and would now be giving Amy Adams insights on how to play the "real" me.

On the other hand, I would like to cling to my last shards of sanity and this book is -- in a word --insane. Blogging about reading it just tops the insanity with inanity.

That, of course, describes 99.98% of the internet, so what the heck.  I'll take a few days to work my way back up to the next page and if my eyes aren't bleeding too badly, I'll post about it.