James Joyce
Ulysses

Muse, of the man of many wiles
Tell me, who wandered much, after he had cast down
The sacred towers of Ilion;
Who saw many cities, and of the peoples
Knew the mind; who on the sea
Suffered many woes at heart,
While he sought to preserve his own life,
And bring his companions home: but in vain
He sought to bring them home,
For, due to their own crimes, all perished.
Fools! who dared to devour the sacred
Cattle of the Sun god with impious tooth,
And incited his wrath,
Who did not grant them the day of return.
Ah! part of such wondrous deeds
Narrate also to us, daughter and goddess of Jove.

<<Solemn and rotund, Buck Mulligan appeared from the top of the stairs, carrying a bowl of lather on which lay crossed a mirror and a razor. A loose yellow dressing gown was gently fluttering behind him, in the gentle morning breeze. He raised the bowl and intoned: - Introibo ad altare Dei.>>

Thalatta, Thalatta!, the sailors of Xenophon shouted when they finally saw the sea, sea, this sweet gray mother that brought us into the world, sea, vermilion mirror, sea... the bay of Dublin, Sandycove beach that "ignites" the start of the Joycian Odyssey, from the dusty stairs of the Martello Tower and Algy singing to us of the mute and brooding waves, silence, everyone: Buck Mulligan intones the ode to the Muses accompanied by the little black mass of morning shaving, and sings opening his blasphemous mouth to an absurd rhythm. Chrysostom. He looks around in the cramped space and awakens He who, with an absurd name, from ancient Greek: Stephen, the Joyce who wandered pensively through Dublin seeking the freedom that he would only acquire with exile: Exiles, indeed, not Expatriates - Omphalos, the center of the earth. And then Haines, anti-Semitic England that would not look kindly upon the fall of Her empire into the hands of Those labeled as German Jews... no, it would be a pity, and, to the rage of Caliban! Stephen/Telemachus, young, still does not suffer the body - Joyce explained to Carlo... and indeed:

I am the child
possessor of the halo
that makes him invisible

...this novel is different, and Eliot was wrong when he said that Ulysses was not a novel, indeed, Joyce always defined it as a novel... but it is a total literary revolution, October 29, 1922, we read the pages and ask ourselves in astonishment, where is the third-person narrator? Vacationing in the Maldives... like Alitalia employees, or almost: and then, this stressful confusion, the punctuation, oh sacred punctuation glory be to you and may all the little angels sing you a great glory, Cranly's arm be with you in the highest heavens, but have mercy, return to recompose your limbs among all these adjectives hyperbole names things facts places sayings thoughts molten lava molten gold soliloquy wildly and by choice, in the depths the stars screech... always ending up in Dublin Bay. Where the promontory blends with the mirror of water... Mother. My Mother. Sacred. That of Stephen, carcass.
I feel like laughing because keeping up with the complexity is or can be fun as in this case because Yes as you can imagine keeping up with Joyce in every maze street corner? ...at every thought, because he doesn't describe the characters, he prints their minds, imprints them on the sheet literally, "like like like"...
<<God made food, but surely the devil made cooks>>

Laertes rejoiced and exclaimed: "What sun
Today shines in the sky, beloved gods!
Son and grandson vie in virtue.
Never did a more beautiful day rise for me".

Leopold Bloom is the Man: understanding, with a heart as big as that of Federigo Degli Alberighi, by the way, let's relaunch him a bit (qvi.)... I was saying, Bloom, whose wife is Molly Bloom, who cheats on him - it's the odyssey of an Irish Jew...
Who has seen him? He is in search of the son, Bloom is the Joyce who strolls around Trieste with a cane and frequents literary cafes, he who falls further into despair for the increasing madness of his daughter, the Man too, who sees in Stephen a distant reflection of himself - and if Telemachus did not yet suffer the body, now he suffers it indeed... threatened by both Scylla and Charybdis, he is in search of the father, and the two will finally find each other, complementary... young Joyce and adult Joyce, will complete each other.

<<Joyce's writing is all the more complex because he mixes the actions of the characters with their thoughts, as if they were one and the same (and in reality indeed they are), without discontinuity: an uninterrupted action. He wished to transpose onto paper the entirety of the individual: it is the individual himself who is chaotic.>>

We are made of ideas, they are the true cells. We are nothing but our thoughts, they say around. Ulysses is Love, in every manifestation - the search for the father, Ireland oppressed by the curiosity and occupation of England, Stephen, talk to me about Hamlet, said Haines... Ulysses is finally life, in its completeness, misery, grandeur, keystone of each of us - the musicality, the waves of the sea, Mother... the fruits, and the columns that still remain today to bask in the sun on that Hellenic land... Stephen, I must Hellenize you, we must Hellenize this tower, educate everything... Kyrie Eleison!
Penelope in the end will remain waiting, will find that strength.

She will shout her Yes to the world, in one of the most beautiful pieces of English literature -

"...Oh and the sea the sea sometimes crimson like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figs in the gardens of the Alameda yes and all those curious little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jasmines and the geraniums and the cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

This is not a review. These are lived experiences. And Yes, I also said Yes, "when he kissed me under those trees while we were watching the city, on the other bank, still and silent..."