35 The Characters and the Modes of Writing in James Joyce's Ulysses (I) --Morning of Contrast Tatsuro Tanji (:Pfitifttlll) of antiquity. Once Joyce said arroGilJltly, "rve Introduction - Homage to the liberal Joyce put in so many enigmas and puules that it will keep the professors buSY for centuries arguing In the beginning of a long chain of critics of over what I meant, and that's the only way of Ulysses wns T. S. Eliot, who left the following insuring one's immortality" (Ellmann 1983, problematic and provoca tive words: 521). But on the other hand it means that Joyce knew to the full that the themes and human In using the .myth, in manipulating a characters of his novel were embedded In the continuous parallel between contempora­ frame of reference of the period and would n eve~ neity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a be permanent. All that will remain in the future method which others must pursue after him. will be enigmas and puu les. They wlll not be imitators, any more than Joyce was really a tough customer. He could tlte scientist who uses the discoveries of an twist his intimate critics and friends around his Einstein in pursuing his own, independent, little finger with case. Fifty-six years after the further investigatlon.s. It is simply a way of publication of Ulysses, Hugh Kenner reconsiders controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape Joyce's tricks : and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contem­ It is behind Valery Larbaud and Stuart porary history. Gilbert and Frank Budgcn that the artist (177) disappears, nail-nte in hand. It was they, at his behest, who equipped the great affirma­ Eliot's skill lies in his casual juxtaposition of the tion of meaninglwness with meaning. two words, shape and significance, which are not (1978, 63) necessarily the same. Only for those who love forms and shapes, they can have some signifi· They were aU the eagerer to equip the text with cance. But with Joyce, they are only superficial. meaning for its meaninglessness. In order to So the perplexing title and the plausible obfuscate the meartinglessness, Joyce had re­ headings of tlte episodes he finally obliterated course to a variety of styles. For the rest of his out of the text were all masks which enabled life, the problem of style continue~ to be his Joyce to achieve his ideal of relining himself out only concern. Joyce seems to ha,·e come to the of existence. In addition, they function as a realization that aU was style, living, writing and means of insuring Joyce's immortality, because all that. When he was asked by his younger "parallels that never meet" (Levin, 7 1) only brother Stanislaus about fascism, he answered bring about never-ending S\vinss of criticism be­ impatiently, " For God's sake don't talk politics. tween the defense of contemporaneity and tha t I'm not interested in politics. The only tlting that 36 37 r ,. interests me is style" (Ellmann 1983, 697). For for a moment in the face of the vast conglo mera­ ent from hi s exalted mood in the last chapter of covers the pages of the text. According as Ste­ J oyce, aU is style, all is surface, and all is mas k. tion of words in Uly sses. But Joyce, who was A Portrait. There Stephen declared to Cranl y phen strays in to mental paral ysis in the first In Uly sses, a great masquerade , J oyce played much interested in the activities of critics as con­ that he would not serve and was on the point of three episodes ("Tele machiad' '), the narrative roles with styles. By adapting stylistic idiosyncra­ tributors to hi s immortality, took a liberal atti­ r leaving for Paris, full of a mbition. But here he, corners itself into a deadend conscio usness of sies to the peculiarity of the person he was play­ tude to a variety of interpretations. Once Joyce who was fo rced to come back from Paris by a Stephen. ing, he obtained stylistic masks behind which he told Arthur Power of his fra nk feeling as follows: I telegram saying, " Noth er (sic] dying come home In the paragraph quoted above it is difficult could hide his own actual existence. But to " Th ough people may read more into Ulysses fa ther" (3 . 199), is bothered by the ghost of his to distingui sh between the narrator's voice and achieve this end, he had first to abandon his own than I ever in te nded , who is to say that they are r mo ther before whom he refused to pray on his Stephen's, for ''Stephen exists, for us readers o f proper style es tablished through A Portrait of the wrong: do any of us know what we are crea t­ kn ees whil e she was dying on her bed. Bound by words, in a zone of interference between 'his' Artist as a Young Man toge ther with his a uto bio­ ing?" (Power, 89) . Encouraged by this ca lculated I the past full of frustration , Stephen finds no habits with words and the practices of J ames graphical double, Stephen Dedalus. Thus Joyce liberality , we must take a brave step into a huge hope in the present and in the future. Joyce., (Kenner 1987 , 68). Especiall y, as Andre introduced another character, Leopold Bloom, to With such a change of Stephen's situation, Topia points out, the free indirect discourse maze of Ulysses just like a number of predeces­ r make him execute the mission above-mentioned sors. the narrative stance has also changed: in A Por­ " establishes an unstable intermediary zone allow­ in his place. In the course of time, Bloom's style I n·ait, J oyce adopted a sympathetic viewpoint o n ing the narrator to operate on two levels of dis­ gradually comes to overwhelm Stephen's and St e phen and used a third-person style which, course at the same tim •~" (1 04). Though in his preside over the whole text. However, it is not Morning of Contrast .I much affected by Stephen's conscio usness, essay Topia limits these two levels to the text Bloom but his wife, Molly, who ends this novel. deve loped according to his growth, but in the and the quotation without quotation marks, it is We cannot attach too much importance to this Stephen: A Shape That Can't Be Changed first episode of Ulysses, he rather separates the possible to extend them to the chara cters' dis­ problem. But all we can say in this place is that I narra tive viewpoint from Stephens conscio us­ course and the narrator's. So it is the interference Joyce was careful to the end. That day begins with a pretentious appea r­ ness, and o nl y occasionall y approaches it for a of Stephen's interi or monologue with the narra­ Ulysses is a stratified text: it is polysemous ance of Bu ck Mulligan on top of the Martello r ho rt time. " Tho ugh Stephen's nature has no t tor's mode o f writing that o ri ents the narrative in and polyphonic, full of o pposing meanings and Tower: rad ica ll y altered," Harry Levin says, " J oyce's the " Telemachiad ." The result is that the three values and crammed with obscure figures and I characterization throws new li ght upon it, and stapl es of the narrative mode which consist of events. Inspecting all the stages J oyce went Stately, plump Buck Mulligan ca me examines it fo r the first time 'in mediate relatio n inte1ior mo nologue, free indirec t discourse and through in writing Ulysses, Michael Groden finds from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of la ther I to others· ., ( Levin , 81). Thus his typical melan­ dialogue diminish into Stephen's interi or mo no­ out that " J oyce wanted Ulysses to be a record of on wl1ich a mirro r and a razor Ja y crossed. A cho li c feelings are described by free indirect logue with minimal objective descriptions. Hi s aU the stages he passed th rough and not a prod­ yellow dressing-gow11, ungirdled, was sus­ I disc ourse: interior mo nologue always tends to converge uct of the last one" (203). So we must revisit it tained gently behind him on the mild morn­ upon the moment of epiphany that recapitulates as we do an old city in compliance with the ing air. He held the bowl aloft a nd intoned: I Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagge d political, economical and personal situations and advice of Edmund Wilson (169). As Joseph - Introibo ad a/tare Dei. granite, leaned his palm again st his brow and retrospectively gives significance to the sc mpu­ Frank says, " Joyce cannot be read - he can only Halted, he peered down the dark wind­ I gazed the fraying edge of his shiny black lous descriptions piled up up to that mo ment ; and be reread" (19). Only by rereading, we ca n attain ing stairs and ca ll ed out coarsely: coatsleeve. Pain , that was not yet the pain of this moment is revealed only through Stephen's a unified spatial apprehension of the world of - Come up, Kinch' Come, you fea rful jesuit. love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream mind to the reader. But J oyce has exhausted the Ulysses. But this apprehension neve r brings about (I.