“How many!” is an exclamation of the sheer scale of Death, unavoidable in a cemetery when surrounded by physical markers of the deceased. This sentiment parallels T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, where a figure “neither living nor dead” walks through the “Unreal City,” reflecting, “so many, I had not thought death had undone so many” (Eliot 63). We also see similarity to Dante’s Inferno, where Dante exclaims, “I should never have believed that death could have unmade so many” (III.56-57).
“How many!” is also the culmination of musings on mortality throughout the episode. Earlier, Bloom reflects, “Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute… Too many in the world” (6.515-516); Mr. Power asks, “How many broken hearts are buried here?”(6.644) and the caretaker inquires, “How many have you for tomorrow?” (6.797). The ever-prudent Bloom even suggests a solution to overcrowding cemeteries: “More room if they buried them standing” (6.764). In these cases, the focus is not on individual loss but on the overwhelming, almost incomprehensible, scope of death.Â
Casual observations of funerals, idle remarks about broken hearts, the graveyard caretaker’s scheduling of burials, and allusions to other literature all coalesce into an overwhelming realization: the grandeur of death. Yet the moment does not feel manufactured. Joyce’s modernist approach constructs a beautiful sentiment. With Joyce, Bloom’s thoughts lack grandiosity, but lead to grand moments.
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