James Joyce and Nationalism by Nolan Emer

Author:Nolan, Emer [Nolan, Emer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0203213122
Publisher: TaylorFrancis
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

FORGIVENESS AND FORGETFULNESS

If it cannot be fairly concluded in this context that Ulysses offers an explicit vindication of the use of force, none the less it can be demonstrated that it provides, in the figure of Bloom, an important insight into the pacificism of the oppressed. His sexual masochism is more clearly revealed in Chapter 15 than elsewhere, but at a different level in Chapter 16 (‘Eumaeus’) we can observe a related strategy, a narrative mechanism by which an experience of defeat is transmuted into a story of success. This can be understood, like masochism, as a ploy by means of which gratification is gained from humiliation, thus transmuting pain into pleasure.

Recognizing the nationalist rhetoric of the cabman’s shelter’s keeper (reputed to be Skin-the-Goat, who was the getaway driver for the Invincibles after the murders in the Phoenix Park in 1882), Bloom tells Stephen how he has recently heard the ‘same identical lingo’ (U, p. 525), in an obvious reference to what happened in Barney Kiernan’s. He announces to Stephen his rhetorical victory over the citizen, telling him how ‘he simply but effectively silenced the offender’ and commenting that this illustrates how ‘a soft answer turns away wrath’. Clearly, this summary completely contradicts Bloom’s recent experience: his ‘soft answer’ has not succeeded in protecting him from the consequences of the citizen’s rage. Just as the citizen claims a possibility of victory when there seems to be none evident, except in the force of his rhetoric—

—It’s on the march, says the citizen…. (U, p. 266) We’ll put force against force…. Ay, they drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan. (U, p. 270)

—so too Bloom creatively misinterprets his history, in order the better to play the role of paternal adviser to Stephen. He behaves, to a smaller audience, and in a lower key, exactly as the citizen.

The sailor to whom Stephen and Bloom listen in the shelter stands as the last of the storytellers of Ulysses. His art is the final sorry provider of an experience of social community in the collective experience of narrative in the novel, and his violent one-liners are comically reduced even further by their translation into a recognizably Bloomian idiom:

– Pom! then he shouted once.

The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there being still a further egg.

– Pom! He shouted twice.

Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding bloodthirstily:

– Buffalo Bill shoots to kill

Never missed nor he never will. (U, p. 510)

Just as narrative art has been pared down by this stage simply to tales of violence—‘- And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his back. Knife like that…. Like that. Prepare to meet your God, says he. Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt’ (U, p.

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