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9 Scylla and Charybdis

9 min read

Summary

At the National Library, Stephen explains to some scholars his biographical theory of the works of Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, which he argues are based largely on the posited adultery of Shakespeare’s wife. Buck Mulligan arrives and interrupts to read out the telegram that Stephen had sent him indicating that he would not make their planned rendezvous at The Ship. Bloom enters the National Library to look up an old copy of the ad he has been trying to place. He passes in between Stephen and Mulligan as they exit the library at the end of the episode.

Odyssey Allusion

In The Odyssey, Odysseus passes through a treacherous, narrow strait: on one side is Scylla, a murderous, multi-headed monster on the jagged rocks, and on the other is Charybdis, a giant sea-monster who creates a whirlpool to capture its prey. As Stephen delivers his lecture, he is navigating between various pairs of powerful forces: the ideas of Aristotle and Plato, the impulses of youth and maturity, the relationship between the artist and his/her art, and the disciplines of dogmatic scholasticism and spiritual mysticism.

Characters

Stephen - he gives a speech on his theories of Hamlet Mulligan - comes in late and mainly insults, interrupts Stephen Thomas W. Lyster - a quaker librarian John Eglinton - a critic and essayist, a part of the theory discussion, lowkey a hater George Russell - ??? A.E. - ?? Mr. Richard Best - a part of the Hamlet theory discussoin Bloom - comes in at the end looking to look up the Isle of Man lock symbol

Episode Notes

Stephen arrives at the National Library and speaks to the men

  • Eglinton is unsuccessful at pitting the other men against Stephen
    • He claims, “Our young Irish bards… have yet to create a figure which the world will set besdie Saxon Shakespeare’s Hamlet or James I or Essex.” 9.43
    • Of course, much later it is said, “Our national epic has yet to be written” 9.309
    • Does Joyce posit his work as the literaryr sucessor and himself next to the likes of Shakespeare and Homer?
    • He further posits, “Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The surpreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring… All the rest is of schoolboys for schoolboys.” 9.48 Art has to reveal to us ideas
  • Stephen retorts, “The schoolmen were school boys first… Aristotle was once Platos schoolboy.” 9.57

Stephen offers his theory of Hamlet

  • Stephen’s theory is biographical in nature:
    • Shakespeare is the murdered King Hamlet, husband to unfaithful Queen Gertrude (Ann Hathaway), usurped and cuckolded by his brother Claudius (Richard Shakespeare)
    • He says, ” Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death” 9.174
    • Further, Shakespeare has just lost is father John Shakespeare, thus “being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson” 9.867
    • it’s not literal then, and it serves to explain the paradox promised back in 1 Telemachus that Stephen’s Hamlet Theory Paradox “proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Hamlet’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father” 1.555 and when Stephen’s student “proves by algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather.” 2.151 mathematical proof that shakespeares ghost in 2 Nestor.
    • And also Shakespeare the prolific famed writer as “the father of all his race”; indeed, “after God Shakespeare has created most” 9.1028

Back in the Librarian’s Office, Stephen and Russel speak

  • Russel asks, “When we read the poety of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived?” 9.185
  • He questions making art (the ideal) about the artist (the real): “peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet’s drinking, the poet’s debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal” 9.187
  • To what extent is Stephen as the Authors Proxy? How deeply do we read into the character and the similaities and differeneces?

Stephen’s mind wanders

  • He thinks of his past self: “Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound” 9.205
  • “I, I and I. I.” 9.212 I I and I I mirrors Blooms’ exact same revelation, 8.917 Me. And me now
  • Indeed, Stephen also thinks to himself, “Buzz. Buzz,” 9.207 an allusion to Hamlet but also to windowpane of Davy Byrne’s Pub in Lestrygonians, where two “flies buzzed” 8.918

Stephen continues his lecture

  • His mind wanders to his dead mother: “Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata rutilantium.” 9.221
  • He is interrupted others, Eglinton says that Shakespeare made a mistake marrying Anne Hathaway
  • Stephen is left out of a “gathering together a sheaf of our younger poets’ verses.” 9.290
  • “Here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have lived to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when he lived among women.” 9.548

Mulligan enters, Stephen is quiet for two pages

  • “A ribald face, sullen as a dean’s, Buck Mulligan came forward, then blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.” 9.485

Bloom enters, in the backround and Mr. Lyster is called away to help him

  • ” There’s a gentleman here, sir … to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last year” [9.586]
  • “A patient silhouette waited, listening.” [9.597]
  • “a bowing dark figure following” 9.602

The discussion returns to Anne Hathaway

  • First, Anne had to borrow money from a Sheppard to pay off a debt she owed which Shakespeare was rich and famous
  • Shakespeare willed only his second best bed to her
    • “It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr Secondbest Best said finely.” 9.712
    • “She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes.” 9.800

“You cannot eat your cake and have it too” 9.738 Cake and eat it too

Stephen again dives into his theory

  • Stephen asserts Shakespeare was the Ghost of King Hamlet, who spoke to his son, a surrogate for Hamnet Shakespeare (who died at 11 years old, similar to how Rudy died 11 years ago?)
  • And that the ghost was speaking of Ann Hathaway’s affair with Shakespeare’s brother, Richard (Claudius, in the play)
  • “A king and a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be divorced.” 9.1034
  • “Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” 9.1045

Something about Knowing Eyes

“The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.” 9.827 Eyes that do not know me

What’s in a Name

John asks, “Names! What’s in a name?” 9.901 a reference to Romeo and Juliet Later, “What’s in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours” 9.927

Everyone readies to leave

  • The talk continues of a literary gathering in the evening
    • Mulligan is explicitly invited
    • Stephen is not explicitly invited
  • Mulligan leaves with Stephen, exepcted to get free rounds later
  • “Life is many days. This will end.” 9.1097
  • Stephen notices a woman wearing a “blueribboned hat” 9.1123, this could be Emma Cleary, his romantic interest in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Bloom navigates between Stephen and Mulligan

  • “a man passed out between them, bowing, greeting” 9.1204
  • This is Mr. Bloom, slipping between Stephen and Mulligan like Odysseus navigating between Scylla and Charybdis)
  • This reminds Stephen of a dream that he forgot in Proteus:
    • “Here I watched the birds for augury. Ængus of the birds. They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.” 9.1207
    • The Retrospective Arranger again makes an apperance
  • Buck jokes that Bloom “looked upon Stephen to lust after him” 9.1210

All three characters leave this chapter as wandering rocks into the sea of streets of Dublin

Analysis

Discussion Questions (Anna Duffy)

  1. What do we understand of Stephen’s relationship with his own father through his thoughts on Hamlet? His thoughts on the relationship between a father and son more generally? Does this change if Stephen does not in fact believe his own theory of Hamlet? Or if we agree with the beliefs of Russell that there is no good in prying into the family life of an artist, and we should just accept “immortal” art (9.188)? 

Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.” (9.825-827)

  1. What and where are the Homeric parallels in the chapter? Bloom navigates between Mulligan and Stephen at the end of the chapter (9.1203) but it seems that there are other places where it is Stephen who is navigating the literary and philosophical debate. 

“A like fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool.” (9.464)

“Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.” (9.139-140) 

  1. How do we understand the domestic politics that are referenced throughout the chapter? Haine’s purchase of an Irish book of poetry, the references to the Boer war, Sinn Fein and Irish language? 

“We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.” (9.101-102) 

“Khaki Hamlets don’t hesitate to shoot.” (9.133) 

“But neither the midwife’s lore nor the caudlelecturers saved him from the archon of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.” (9.237-239)

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