What Did James Joyce Mean When He Wrote Ulysses Anyway ? Part V

Burgess has made a poignant note when he refers to this infinite array of ideas. Burgess describes an almost glass onion effect, as the illusions of the past slip away from the inner core of a tightly constructed text.

"But the Homeric parallel is only the beginning. Shape and direction are primarily imposed on each chapter by means of an Odyssean reference, but that reference s suggests related references, subreferences, and they have much to do with not only the direction and subject-matter of the interior monologue but the action itself, and even the technique used to present the action. Thus, a Dublin newspaper--office is a reasonable parallel to the cave of Aeolus-- the god of the winds whose enmity Ulysses earned---and, so that the scriptures may be fullfilled, Bloom goes to the office of the Freeman's Journal and National Press. It is appropriate that the scene should be wind-swept, galleys flying about the place, but also appropriate that wind should suggest, the lungs, the windiness of newspaper rhetoric, the art of rhetoric itself, the wind swift transmission of news(expressed in headlines which punctuate the text) and the technique through which the action, talk, and thought are presented. We end up with a formidalbe battery of clamps---the scene, the art the preseding physical organ, the technique. Above everything puffs and blows the wind-- god himself---the Editor. If we look deepest of all we shall find that the episode even has a predominant color--red. Red is right for the art of inflaming passions through words and the journalistic cult of the sensational." (3)

This quality of interlayering gave Ulysses a sense of beauty that leads the reader onto a road of charmed mystical enchantment. Every curve in that road to enchantment brings another tale of wonder to discover. Roses and flowers of incredible color run around the meadows, hills, and streams of this beautiful forest. But, as the rose in spring bursting forth with the invigoration of a sense of rebirth, life abounding in a garden of satisfaction, undefinable delights; the beauty of Ulysses is surrounded by a thicket of thorns, whose steady encroachment of the rose, while protecting such beauty in the hallowed wreathe of safety secludes the wonder of this beauty from the eyes of the beholder for another day.

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