Critical Exegesis of Ulysses, XVII, 1182-1213, pp.577

The scene in which Stephen and Bloom share a colossal and healthy urination beneath a panorama of stars is among my favorites, and one, I believe of considerable import. The fact that it occurs in the chapter designated 'Ithaca,' and its implied emphasis on the home, forces the reader to reflect upon a potential relationship between the two as father-son. I believe it makes sense to unpack the scene with this context in mind. At a later juncture, we can problematize this framework and ask whether or not such a paradigm is viable.

The episode opens in a silence that is never breached verbally, the only sound the reverberation of their own "sequent, then simultaneous" (xvii, 1193,pp.577) sonorous streams. The silence however is not indicative of their activity, as the second question (whose referent is never established) anticipates (1185). Both are deeply absorbed in reflection, "each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces" (1182). The language suggests a certain degree of mutuality, yet at the same time renders them distinct. They are "contiguous," yet their images are inverted, focal points of trajectory reflected as through a mirror.

We can now pause to pose an important question: is this an act of kinship, or of simple comradery between two men? There is a latent nervousness in their action, "their organs of micturtrition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumspection" (1188). Neither is willing to fully expose himself. Phallic invisibility seems requisite for their comfort. Beyond this anxiety, the action is framed in a certain competitiveness. In his heyday, Bloom apparently was a notable urinator. Aged a few decades and young Stephen, bladder loaded from drink, can outmatch his arc and approach decibels Bloom is no longer capable of. Again, should we understand this competitive engagement simply as two men obliquely vying for dominance, or is it exemplary of a more primal aggressiveness that exists between father and son? The only rationale that implicates the latter conclusion is its resonance with an earlier portion of the text in which Stephen speculates about Hamlet's relationship with his father. He concludes that

The son unborn mars beauty: born he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a new male: his growth is his father's decline, his youth his father's envy, his friend his father's enemy. (ix,855,pp.170)

This relationship of elevation and its attendant demise, emphasized throughout the overall thematic of the text, is carefully depicted in this somewhat comical incident.

Their polemic attitude (though notably evoked by a narrator whose accountability is often suspect) is insinuated once again as both are deeply invested in the other's manhood. The consideration of the intentionally invisible, though resoundingly audible, phallus is reciprocal, but the content of those considerations, posed by the narrator as "problems," is widely dissimilar. Bloom concerns himself with the sensuous "problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pilosity" (xvii,1201). Contrarily, Stephen engages questions of the intellect. As an interesting point of digression, that the celebration of the new year falls upon the day of Jesus' circumcision (eight days after his birth, according to Jewish law) came as an epiphanic realization of tremendous proportion on my behalf. Either this points toward my extreme naivete or the extent to which we collectively allow constructs such as the calendar to so forcefully penetrate our experience without even pausing to question them.

The gap between sensation and intellect not easily forged. One possible argument suggests an inarticulate void fixed between these two essentially irresolvable aspects of our character. Analogous to the father-son relationship, the two mutually contradict and repel one another. The enrichment of one implies an irrevocable diminution of the other's capacity. Yet there remains a degree of isomorphism between the two distinct series of problems: both collapse into questions of aesthetics. For Bloom, the range of permissible hairiness in the pubic region and the more general standard of sanitariness. For Stephen, why a foreskin should be privileged over other "divine excrescences [such] as hair and toenails" (1208).

To come down one way or another as to whether the realm of aestheticism can positively mediate, or ideally reunite, these inherent disparities would be excessively contentious. Luckily, another solution presents itself (as the entire chapter constitutes a formulaic, question-and-answer session) as a "celestial sign...by both simultaneously observed" (1210). This calls up yet another confusion and irresolvability. The phenomenon may be observed as temporally simultaneous, but the question of parallax endures. At a fundamental level, there can be no mutuality of perspective. Regardless, a resolution to their problems seemingly lies in the boundlessness of the heavens, extremely distant, though forceful, "with great apparent velocity" (1211).

The shooting star they both witness propels toward the constellation Leo, perhaps an allusion to power, strength and hegemonic authority. From this vague and abstract intimation we might infer the polemic origin of the relationships earlier identified as irresolvable. Schiller (cited in Burger, 44) posits that the rise of society, whose efficacy rests in its power to integrate the interests of distinct individuals through a set of normative expectations, itself annihilated the unity of sense and intellect extant in primitive (pre-social) man. The very idea of civilization entrenches itself a vast nexus of power relationships. The same is at stake, though on a smaller scale, between a father and his son.

Returning to a previously posed question, and without hesitation leaving it unanswered: what is it about the aesthetic realm that might resolve the polemics embedded in these relationships? We are by now comfortable with Joyce's infinite capacity to confuse. He launches us beyond the comfortable binaries where a given question presupposes a truth arrived at through "right reason." Rather he distends reason itself, collapsing easy, cliche arguments into an infinitely generative landscape of irresolution.

Works consulted:

Burger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Tr. By Michael Shaw. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Ed. By Walter Gabler. Vintage Books, New York: 1986.