Joyce J. Ulysses

man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which
injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong
turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own
sweet will on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man
I know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his
extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which
will now be shown. (To Bloom.) I suggest that you will do the handsome
thing.
BLOOM A penny in the pound.
(The mirage of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in
silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino, in
blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an orange
citron and a pork kidney.)
DLUGACZ (Hoarsely.) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.
(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with sunken
eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor. He
applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of
rosepink blood.)
J. J. O'MOLLOY (Almost voicelessly.) Excuse me, I am suffering from a
severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He
assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour
Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive
bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves
to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the
doubt. (A paper with something written on it is handed into court.)
BLOOM (In court dress.) Can give best references. Messrs Callan,
Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon,
ex-lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest .
Queens of Dublin Society. (Carelessly.) I was just chatting this afternoon
at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer
royal, at the levee. Sir Bob, I said...
MRS YELVERTON BARRY (In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength
ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brick quilted dolman, a comb of
brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair.) Arrest him constable. He
wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the
North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He
said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of
the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed
him, he said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half
past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send
me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The
Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.
MRS BELLINGHAM (In cap and seal coneymantle, wrapped up to the nose,
steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzingglasses
which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.) Also to me. Yes, I
believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage
door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of
February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and ballstop in my
bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss
culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a
botanical expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the
homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY Shame on him!
(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins sues forward.)
THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS (Screaming.) Stop thief! Hurrah there,
Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!
SECOND WATCH (Produces handcuffs.) Here are the darbies.
MRS BELLINGHAM He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome
compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound
coachman Balmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of
his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my
person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial
bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped
or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves
in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden
treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged
me, stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me, to defile the
marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (In amazon costume, hard hat,
jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with
bra idea drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes
her welt constantly.) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the
Phnix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes,
I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the
Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. This
plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in
double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris
boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a
partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife as he solemnly assured
me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a
muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to
misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored me to soil his
letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to
bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping.
MRS BELLINGHAM Me too.
MRS YELVERTON BARRY Me too.
(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received from Bloom.)
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Stamps her jingling spurs in a
sudden paroxysm of sudden fury.) I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge
the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive.
BLOOM (His eyes closing, quails expectantly.) Here? (He squirms.)
Again! (He pants cringing.) I love the danger.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS Very much so! I'll make it hot for
you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.
MRS BELLINGHAM Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and
stripes on it!
MRS YELVERTON BARRY Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married
man!
BLOOM All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling
glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Laughs derisively.) O, did you, my
fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life
now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. You
have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.
MRS BELLINGHAM (Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.)
Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an
inch of his life. The cat-o' nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.
BLOOM (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands with hangdog mien.) O
cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let
me off this once. (He offers the other cheek.)
MRS YELVERTON BARRY (Severely.) Don't do so on any account, Mrs
Talboys! He should be soundly trounced!
THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently.)
I'll do no such thing. Pig dog and always was ever since he was pupped! To
dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I'll
dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (She swishes
her hunting crop savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without loss
of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?
BLOOM (Trembling, beginning to obey.) The weather has been so warm.
(Davy Stephens, ringleted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)
DAVY STEPHENS Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with
Saint Patrick's Day Supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the
cuckolds in Dublin.
(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and
exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend John
Hughes S.J. bend low.)
THE TIMEPIECE (Unportalling.)
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo
(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)
THE QUOITS Jigjag, Jigajiga. Jigjag.
(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman silkhatted, Jack Power Simon
Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford,
Lenehan, Paddy Leonard Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of a
Nameless One.)
THE NAMELESS ONE Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised
her.
THE JURORS (All their heads turned to his voice.) Really?
THE NAMELESS ONE (Snarls.) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.
THE JURORS (All their heads lowered in assent.) Most of us thought as
much.
FIRST WATCH He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack
the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.
SECOND WATCH (Awed, whispers.) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.
THE CRIER (Loudly.) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a
well-known dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold ad a public
nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes
the most honourable.
(His Honour sir Frederick Falkiner recorder of Dublin, in judicial garb
of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his arms an
umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.)
THE RECORDER I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid
Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! (He dons the black cap.) Let him be
taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in
custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged
by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the
Lord have-mercy on your soul. Remove him. (A black skullcap descends upon
his head.)
(The subsheriff long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry
Clay.)
LONG JOHN FANNING (Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.)
Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?
(H. Rumbold, master barber in a bloodcoloured jerk in and tanner's
apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder mounts the block. A life preserver
and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs grimly his
grapping hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)
RUMBOLD (To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) Hanging Harry,
your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.
(The bells of George's church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)
THE BELLS Heigho! Heigho!
BLOOM (Desperately.) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.
Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzees. (Breathlessly.) Pelvic
basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (Overcome with emotion.) I left the
precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing.) Hynes, may I
speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a
little more .
HYNES (Coldly.) You are a perfect stranger.
SECOND WATCH (Points to the corner.) The bomb is here. FIRST WATCH
Infernal machine with a time fuse. BLOOM No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a
funeral. FIRST WATCH (Draws his truncheon.) Liar!
(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of Paddy
Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed breath. He grows
to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit.
His green eyeflashes bloodshot. Half of one ear all the nose and both thumbs
are ghouleaten.)
PADDY DIGNAM (In a hollow voice.) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor
Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from
natural causes.
(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)
BLOOM (In triumph.) You hear?
PADDY DIGNAM Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list!
BLOOM The voice is the voice of Esau.
SECOND WATCH (Blesses himself.) How is that possible?
FIRST WATCH It is not in the penny catechism.
PADDY DIGNAM By metempsychosis. Spooks.
A VOICE O rocks.
PADDY DIGNAM (Earnestly.) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton,
solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now
I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife
was awfully cut up. Dow is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of
sherry. (He looks round him.) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That
buttermilk didn't agree with me.
(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker stands forth, holding a
bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain,
toad bellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding
sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)
FATHER COFFEY (Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak.) Namine. Jacobs
Vobiscuits. Amen.
(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.) Dignam, Patrick T.,
deceased.
PADDY DIGNAM (With pricked up ears, winces.) Overtones.
(He wriggles forward, places an ear to the ground.) My masters' voice!
JOHN O'CONNELL Burial docket letter number U. P. Eightyfive thousand.
Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.
(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his
tailstiffpointed, his ears cocked.)
PADDY DIGNAM Pray for the repose of his soul.
(He worms down through a coal hole, his brown habit trailing its tether
over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus
turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled, is heard baying
under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted,
in cap and breeches, jumps from his two-columned machine.)
TOM ROCHFORD (A hand to his breastbone, bows.) Reuben J. A florin I
find him. (He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.) My turn now on.
Follow me up to Carlow.
(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the
coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble eyes of nought. All recedes. Bloom
plodges forward again. He stands before a lighted house, listening. The
kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him, twittering, warbling,
cooing.)
THE KISSES (Warbling.) Leo! (Twittering.) Icky licky micky sticky for
Leo! (Cooing.) Coo coocoo! Yummyumm Wom worn! (Warbling.) Big comebig!
Pirouette! Leopopold! (Twittering.) Leeolee! (Warbling.) O Leo!
(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddyflecks,
silvery sequins.)
BLOOM A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.
(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods, trips
down the steps and accosts him.)
ZOE Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.
BLOOM Is this Mrs Mack's?
ZOE No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse.
Mother Slipperslapper. (Familiarly.) She's on the job herself tonight with
the vet, her tipster, that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in
Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (Suspiciously.) You're
not his father, are you?
BLOOM Not I!
ZOE You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?
(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand slides over his
left thigh.)
ZOE How's the nuts?
BLOOM Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier I suppose. One
in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.
ZOE (In sudden alarm.) You've a hard chancre.
BLOOM Not likely.
ZOE I feel it.
(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist lips.)
BLOOM A talisman. Heirloom.
ZOE For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?
(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket, then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by note,
oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her eyes, ringed
with kohol. His smile softens.)
ZOE You'll know me the next time.
BLOOM (Forlornly.) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to.
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round
their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong
hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the
bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white, still,
cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur
of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely
murmuring.)
ZOE (Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously
smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach,
benoith Hierushaloim.
BLOOM (Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
ZOE And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him
a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre
of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
BLOOM (Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat
awkward hand.) Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.) No bloody
fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM (As before.) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish
device. (Lewdly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of
rank weed.
ZOE Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM (In workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating
tie and apache cap.) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought
from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence
by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will,
understanding, all. That is to say, he brought the poison a hundred years
before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies.
All our habits. Why, look at our public life!
(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)
THE CHIMES Turn again, Leopold! Lord Mayor of Dublin!
BLOOM (In alderman's gown and chain.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns
Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from
the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my
programme. Cui Bono? But our buccaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom
ship of finance...
AN ELECTOR Three times three for our future chief magistrate!
(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)
THE TORCH BEARERS Hooray!
(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city
shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late thrice
Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and white silk
tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod
vigorously in agreement.)
LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON (In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral
chain and lace white silk scarf) That alder man sir Leo Bloom's speech be
printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was
born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare
hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated
Boulevard Bloom.
COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK Carried unanimously.
BLOOM (Impassionedly.) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they
recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is
their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses,
supplanters, bug-bears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous
hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted
labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain
stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf
and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev...
(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring
up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mille Failte and Mah Ttob Melek
Israel spans the street. All the windows are thronged with sightseers,
chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the royal Dublin Fusiliers,
the Kings Own Scottish Boraerers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh
Fusiliers, standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school
are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices,
gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The
pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is heard in the distance
playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted,
trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal
standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the
procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a
chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Dublin,
the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo
and Watedord, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and
maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire
Brigade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of
precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor His Eminence Michael cardinal
Logue archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most
reverend Dr William Alexander archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland,
the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist,
anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the
society of friends. her them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with
flying colours: coopen, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers,
law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimney sweeps, lard
refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church
decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertaken, silk mercers, lapidaries,
salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners,
export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse
repository hands, bullion broken, cricket and archery outfitters,
riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing
contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bed chamber Black Rod, Deputy
Garter Gold Stick, the master of hone, the lord great chamberlain, the earl
marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's
iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.
Beefeaten reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph Bloom
appears bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing
Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is
seated on a milkwhite hone with long flowing crimson tail, richly
caparisoned, with golden heads tall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their
balconies throw down rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men
cheer. Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and
wrenbushes.)
BLOOM'S BOYS
The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day,
Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH (Murmurs.) For the Honour of God! And is that Bloom? He
scarcely looks thirtyone.
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest
reformer. Hats off!
(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)
A MILLIONAIRESS (Richly.) Isn't he simply wonderful?
A NOBLEWOMAN (Nobly.) All that man has seen!
A FEMINIST (Masculinely.) And done!
A BELLHANGER A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.
(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)
THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR I here present your un doubted emperor
president and king chairman, the most serene and potent and very puissant
ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First!
ALL God save Leopold the First!
BLOOM (In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor
with dignity.) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.
WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (In purple stock and shovel hat.) Will
you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments
in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?
BLOOM (Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.) So may the
Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.
MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (Pours a cruse of hair oil over Bloom's
head.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick,
Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!
(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He
ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put on
at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ church,
Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up
from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do
homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.)
THE PEERS I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly
worship.
(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor
diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless intercontinental
and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.)
BLOOM My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix
hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our
former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the
splendour of night.
(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black
Maria. The princess Selene, in moon blue robes, a silver crescent on her
head, descends from a Sedan chair borne by two giants. An outburst of
cheering.)
JOHN HOWARD PARNELL (Raises the royal standard.) Illustrious Bloom!
Successor to my famous brother!
BLOOM (Embraces John Howard Parnell.) We thank you from our heart,
John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our
common ancestors.
(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. The
keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows all
that he is wearing green socks.)
TOM KERNAN You deserve it, your honour.
BLOOM On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at
Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with
telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we
yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our
light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry,
Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.
THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS Hear! Hear!
JOHN WYSE NOLAN There's the man that got away James Stephens.
A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY Bravo!
AN OLD RESIDENT You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you
are.
AN APPLEWOMAN He's a man like Ireland wants.
BLOOM My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell
you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere
long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the
Nova Hibernia of the future.
(Thirtytwo workmen wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland,
under the guidance of Derwan the builder construct the new Bloomusalem. It
is a colossal edifice, with crystal roof built in the shape of a huge pork
kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the course of its extension
several buildings and monuments are demolished. Government offices are
temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the
ground. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red
with the letters: L. B. Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the
walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)
THE SIGHTSEERS (Dying) Morituri te salutant. (They die.)
(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trap-door. He points
an elongated finger at Bloom.)
THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH Don't you believe a word he Says. That man is
Leopold M'Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.
BLOOM Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!
(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with his
sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful
enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees,
are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute Maundy money, commemoration
medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars,
free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives, in sealed envelopes tied with
gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of
cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of
Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins,
dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for all
tram lines, coupons of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny
dinner counters, cheap reprints of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy
and Fritz (politic), Care of the Baby (infantilic), So Meals for 7/6
(culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic), Expel that Pain (medic),
Infant's Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let's All Chortle (hilaric),
Canvasser's Vade Mecum (journalic), love-letters of Mother Assistant
(erotic), Who's Who in Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart
(melodic), Pennywise's Way to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and
scramble. Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom's robe. The lady
Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses
him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph
is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.)
THE WOMEN Little father! Little father!
THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS
Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,
Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach.)
BABY BOARDMAN (Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth.) Hajajaja.
BLOOM (Shaking hands with a blind stripling.) My more than Brother!
(Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple.) Dear old friends!
(He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls.) Peep! Bopeep! (He
wheels twins in a perambulator.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (He performs
juggler's tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet
silk handkerchiefs from his mouth.) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (He
consoles a widow.) Absence makes the heart grow younger. (He dances the
Highland fling with grotesque antics.) Leg it, ye devils! (He kisses the
bedsores of a palsied veteran.) Honourable wounds! (He trips up a fat
policeman.) U.p.: up. U.p.: up. (He whispers in the ear of a blushing
waitress and laughs kindly.) Ah, naughty, naughty! (He eats a raw turnip
offered him by Maurice Butterly, farmer.) Fine! Splendid! (He refuses to
accept three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist.) My dear
fellow, not at all! (He gives his coat to a beggar.) Please accept. (He
takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples.) Come
on, boys! Wriggle it, girls!
THE CITIZEN (Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald
muffler.) May the good God bless him!
(The rams' horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is hoisted.)
BLOOM (Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and
reads solemnly.) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur
Hanukah Ros chaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah
Talith.
(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.)
JIMMY HENRY The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic
Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice,
solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this
our loyal city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.
PADDY LEONARD What am I to do about my rates and taxes?
BLOOM Pay them, my friend.
PADDY LEONARD Thank you.
NOSEY FLYNN Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?
BLOOM (Obdurately.) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are
bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five
pounds.
J.J. O'MOLLY A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!
NOSEY FLYNN Where do I draw the five pounds?
PISSER BURKE For bladder trouble?
BLOOM
Acid. nit. hydrochlor dil., 20 minims,
Tinct. mix. vom., 4 minims.
Extr. taraxel. lig., 30 minims.
Aq. dis. ter in die.
CHRIS CALLINAN What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of
Aldebaran?
BLOOM Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.
JOE HYNES Why aren't you in uniform?
BLOOM When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the
Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?
BEN DOLLARD Pansies?
BLOOM Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.
BEN DOLLARD When twins arrive?
BLOOM Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.
LARRY O'ROURKE An eight day licence for my new premises. You remember
me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen of
stout for the missus.
BLOOM (Coldly.) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no
presents.
CROFTON This is indeed a festivity.
BLOOM (Solemnly.) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.
ALEXANDER KEYES When will we have our own house of keys?
BLOOM I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten
commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile.
Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses.
Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and
night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must
now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival, with masked licence, bonuses
for all, esperanto the universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of
barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free love and a free lay
church in a free lay state.
O'MADDEN BURKE Free fox in a free henroost.
DAVY BYRNE (Yawning.) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!
BLOOM Mixed races and mixed marriage.
LENEHAN What about mixed bathing?
(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration.
All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare Street Museum appears,
dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues of several naked
goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster
figures, also naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic
Music, Amor Publicity, Manufacture, liberty of Speech, Plural Voting,
Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless
Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.)
FATHER FARLEY He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an any thingarian
seeking to overthrow our holy faith.
MRS RIORDAN (Tears up her will.) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!
MOTHER GROGAN (Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.) You beast! You
abominable person!
NOSEY FLYNN Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.
BLOOM (With rollicking humour.)
I vowed that I never would leave her,
She turned out a cruel deceiver.
With my tooraloom tooraloom tooralcom tooraloom.
HOPPY HOLOHAN Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.
PADDY LEONARD Stage Irishman!
BLOOM What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of
Casteele. (Laughter.)
LENEHAN Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!
THE VEILED SIBYL (Enthusiastically.) I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it.
I believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest man
on earth.
BLOOM (Winks at the bystanders.) I bet she's a bonny lassie.
THEODORE PUREFOY (In fishing cap and oilskin jacket.) He employs a
mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.
THE VEILED SIBYL (Stabs herself.) My hero god! (She dies.)
(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by
stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their
veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of
Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating
themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging themselves in
stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.)
ALEXANDER J. DOWIE (Violently.) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the
man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A
fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave
precocious signs of infantile debauchery recalling the cities of the plain,
with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the
white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman,
intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the
caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban!
THE MOB Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!
(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper
and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value,
hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheeps'
tails, odd pieces of fat.)
BLOOM (Excitedly.) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.
By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry. He
is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper, has
wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan
capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist to give
medical testimony on my behalf.
DR MULLIGAN (In motor jerkin, green motoroggles on his brow.) Dr Bloom
is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private
asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is
present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have
been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic
exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from
selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has
metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his
memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made
a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427
anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta.
(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)
DR MADDEN Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming
generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits
of wine in the national teratological museum.
DR CROTTHERS I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid.
Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.
DR PUNCH COSTELLO The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.
DR DIXON (Reads a bill of health.) Professor Bloom is a finished
example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many
have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on
the whole, coy though not feeble-minded in the medical sense. He has written
a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the
Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is
practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw
litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a
hairshirt winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I
understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory.
Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for
clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been
called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.
(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American
makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, bank cheques,
banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I.O.U.s,
wedding rings' watch-chains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly
collected.)
BLOOM O, I so want to be a mother.
MRS THORNTON (In nursetender's gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be
soon over it. Tight, dear.
(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive
plants. All are handsome, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade,
respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages
fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each has his name
printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger,
Chrysostomos, Maindorиe, Silversmile, Silberselber Vifargent, Panargros.
They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several
different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of
railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vice chairmen of hotel
syndicates.)
A VOICE Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?
BLOOM (Darkly.) You have said it.
BROTHER BUZZ Then perform a miracle.
BANTAM LYONS Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.
(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes
through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the the ledge by
his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals several
sufferers from kings evil, contracts his face so as to resemble many
historical personages, lord Beaconsfield, lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of
Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle,
Rossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe,
Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different
directions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by extending his
little finger.)
BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO (In papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as
breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and
brown paper mitre.) Leopoldi autem generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah
begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and
Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le
Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat
Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss
begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli began Aranjuez
and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and