The Cosmic Time of Empire by Barrows Adam;

Author:Barrows, Adam;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

There's a little watch up there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by.

His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can't see it. If you imagine it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it.

He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right hand at arm's length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes: completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun's disk. Must be the focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interesting. There was a lot of talk about those sunspots when we were in Lombard Street west. Terrific explosions they are. There will be a total eclipse this year: autumn some time. (166)

Joyce contrasts Bloom's relationship with two different timepieces: the watch on the bank and the sun itself. The bank's timepiece, signifying and regulating commerce and trade, is invisible to Bloom; he has no visual access to it and has to place his faith in its existence. To the sun, though, Bloom has direct access, controlling the extent to which he allows its rays to pass through his fingers. His bodily relationship to the sun leads to a train of thought about solar activity (sunspots and eclipses) with which he is very comfortable. The “explosions” of sunspots remind him of his social connections, and he remembers conversations in Lombard Street about solar phenomena.

In his experiment with the sun Bloom feels himself in a very graphic way the master of his surroundings, but a sudden recollection brings on a wave of helplessness. It is at this point that he remembers that the time ball, giving him Greenwich rather than local time, had been lying to him:

Now that I come to think of it, that ball falls at Greenwich time. It's the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to Professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do: man always feels complimented, flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be descended from some king's mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what you're not to: what's parallax? Show this gentleman the door

Ah.

His hand fell again to his side.

Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas, then solid, then world, then cold, then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock like that pineapple rock. (167)

In his imagined confrontation with the astronomer Charles Joly Bloom recognizes that the observatory, with its control of social time, is a site of power. He imagines himself having to placate the royal astronomer's ego as he would a nobleman and being thrown out of the observatory for simply saying the word parallax, with its suggestion that the role of the observer has some meaningful relationship to what happens in the heavens.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.