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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
my lord this was a struggle to read. really loved some of the descriptions of some things but the whole book just wasn’t my vibe
Critique
Ulysses is an attempt at the complete recapture, so far as it is possible in fiction, of the life of a particular time and place. The scene is Dublin, its streets, homes, shops, newspaper offices, pubs, hospitals, brothels, schools. The time is a single day in 1904. A continuation of the story of Stephen Dedalus as told in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the novel is also a series of remarkable Homeric parallels, the incidents, characters, and scenes of a Dublin day corresponding to those of the Odyssean myth. Leopold Bloom is easily recognizable as Ulysses; Molly Bloom his wife, as Penelope, and Dedalus himself as Telemachus, son of Ulysses-in Joyce's novel Bloom's spiritual son. The book is written in a variety of styles and techniques, the most important being the stream of consciousness method by which Joyce attempts to reproduce not only the sights, sounds, and smells of Dublin, but also the memories, emotions, and desires of his people in the drab modern world. Ulysses is the most widely discussed novel in our time, and the most influential for technique and style. Source, Masterplots, Madgill. Salem Press. P. 1964.
Ulysses is an attempt at the complete recapture, so far as it is possible in fiction, of the life of a particular time and place. The scene is Dublin, its streets, homes, shops, newspaper offices, pubs, hospitals, brothels, schools. The time is a single day in 1904. A continuation of the story of Stephen Dedalus as told in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the novel is also a series of remarkable Homeric parallels, the incidents, characters, and scenes of a Dublin day corresponding to those of the Odyssean myth. Leopold Bloom is easily recognizable as Ulysses; Molly Bloom his wife, as Penelope, and Dedalus himself as Telemachus, son of Ulysses-in Joyce's novel Bloom's spiritual son. The book is written in a variety of styles and techniques, the most important being the stream of consciousness method by which Joyce attempts to reproduce not only the sights, sounds, and smells of Dublin, but also the memories, emotions, and desires of his people in the drab modern world. Ulysses is the most widely discussed novel in our time, and the most influential for technique and style. Source, Masterplots, Madgill. Salem Press. P. 1964.
It was a goal for me to read this novel before I turned 30. And I did it in a few weeks.
This book is incredibly dirty, and it is no wonder that it was banned until 1934. Not much else can really be said about this book. While I don't have any Irish background, and am not at all familiar with Ireland, I still had little difficulty understanding what was going on. The book has a reputation for being difficult, but the truth of the matter is that it is incredibly dirty and hilarious, and nobody really acknowledges that. The judge, in his decision to unban the book, doesn't really state the specific segments in question, and you're left to wonder for ~350-400 pages exactly what makes it so objectionable. I can assure you, however, that the book definitely delivers.
And I'm not gonna say anything more than that.
This book is incredibly dirty, and it is no wonder that it was banned until 1934. Not much else can really be said about this book. While I don't have any Irish background, and am not at all familiar with Ireland, I still had little difficulty understanding what was going on. The book has a reputation for being difficult, but the truth of the matter is that it is incredibly dirty and hilarious, and nobody really acknowledges that. The judge, in his decision to unban the book, doesn't really state the specific segments in question, and you're left to wonder for ~350-400 pages exactly what makes it so objectionable. I can assure you, however, that the book definitely delivers.
And I'm not gonna say anything more than that.
Yet another "classic" that I did not get along with in the slightest. I made it 27 pages in before realizing that I was giving myself a splitting headache trying to keep up with the stream-of-consciousness writing-style, the dialogue that sounded like nothing more than a cousin on a drunken rant, and characters that I couldn't give two hoots about. Away with you, Mr Joyce, you can go sit with Huckleberry, Tom, and that rotten Gatsby.
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
James Joyce’s Ulysses: The High Mass of Modern Literature
Kindly remove your hats — and if you’d be so good, your insolence along with them — take a seat, and show the requisite deference, for today is no ordinary day. Today, we turn our attention to one of the grandest literary edifices of the modern age, even if we define said age as beginning the moment Alexandrian grammarians began fussing over breathing marks and accents.
Now that I’ve either secured your attention or sufficiently offended your sensibilities — both acceptable outcomes — let us plunge headlong into the deep end. Let us admit, without prevarication, that Joyce’s Ulysses is not a mere “book” (and I’m not speaking solely of its considerable bulk); it is not, heaven forbid, some chirpy page-turner (a term I have, quite staggeringly, seen applied to it in a “review”) that concludes with a murderous butler or redemptive bromide for sins not worth confessing. No, this is a rite, a mystery, an initiation — and, dare I say, demanding labour. It is not to be read at bedtime, two pages today and five tomorrow. It is to be read with sleeves rolled, with a ban on any individual in heels perambulating noisily about the house, with a carafe of coffee of such potency it would cause a Neanderthal to squint — and an ashtray of a size sufficient to cradle the bones of both Patroclus and Achilles.
How, indeed, to describe a work that is not merely read, but experienced? That eschews narrative in favour of realising an entirely new mode of consciousness, of language, of life itself? Ulysses is not merely a novel; it is a literary megalith, an Odyssean ramble across the psychic map of the human condition, an eighteen-part symphony wherein each note reveals a fresh aesthetic and philosophical unveiling.
Form: The Architecture of Chaos
Ulysses simultaneously deconstructs and reanimates narrative form. From the initial, almost Ibsenian rigour of the first chapter to the untrammelled, torrential consciousness of Molly’s final soliloquy, Joyce redraws the very flow of narrative. Each episode is a stylistic laboratory — now a piece of journalistic reportage, now a mock-theatrical script, now a parody of textbooks, now the thrum of unfiltered thought. Form does not serve the story; form is the story.
Dionysian Linguistics
Language in Ulysses is no mere vehicle — it is the subject of inquiry itself. Joyce stretches English to its absolute limit and then a bit further, coining words, shattering syntactic propriety, and infusing his prose with Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Irish, and sundry tongues, with not a whiff of affectation. His prose is not “difficult” — it is dense, opulent, resonant, a polyphonic terrain demanding the reader’s full engagement. Joyce compels us to ask: what, after all, is Language?
Leopold Bloom: The Ultimate Anti-Hero
Bloom is the modern Odysseus, not because he returns to an Ithaca, but because he survives the indignities of everyday life through a quietly majestic inner generosity. A Jew, an Irishman, a husband — but above all, a human being — Bloom becomes a kind of existential archetype. His day, traced in near-real time, ascends to the level of epic. The morning pork kidney is as sacred as Athena’s spear.
Stephen Dedalus: The Intellectual Prometheus
If Bloom is the heart of Ulysses, Stephen is its feverish intellect. Philosophical, arrogant, vacillating, frightened — Stephen is Joyce’s introspective vessel. Through his monologue we glimpse not only personal trauma but a wider cultural malaise: what does it mean to be Irish after the death of one’s language? To be European after the death of God? To be an artist in a world that demands a bankable skill?
Dublin as Cosmography
Dublin, in Ulysses, is no passive backdrop; it is a protagonist. As London is to Dickens and St. Petersburg to Dostoevsky, so Dublin becomes not merely a city but a multidimensional organism. Joyce does not depict a city — he maps it ethically, psychologically, mythologically. Every alley, every street, every pub, is laden with memory, history, and yearning.
The Mythology of the Everyday
Perhaps Joyce’s most audacious achievement lies in the elevation of the quotidian to the mythic. As Homer sang of kings and warriors, Joyce exalts the petty bourgeois, the stranger, the pedestrian. Bloom is no less heroic than Odysseus (and I’ll not tolerate mutterings about his conduct in the Iliad, where — yes — he was a slippery little bastard). His labours are not martial but psychological, ethical, cultural. The grandeur of Homer is replaced by the humanism of the modern — with no loss of lustre.
The Penelope Chapter: Climax, Catharsis, Liberation
Molly’s voice is the most liberating passage in Western literature. Sans punctuation, sans restraint, sans the pretentious niceties of “literary refinement,” Penelope is the book’s true epiphany. It is a hymn to acceptance, to embodiment, to female experience, to the near-mystical lyricism of yes. Yes I said yes I will Yes — a line that distills the cosmogonic force of desire, love, and presence. Yes, Joyce’s “Penelope” is the first woman in non-“erotic” literature to possess a clitoris.
Conclusion
Ulysses is not merely the greatest work of Anglophone literature — it is the Renaissance of language, the Metamorphosis of form, the Theogony of the modern mind. Each page a mirror of consciousness, each phrase a rite of passage. To read it is not an accomplishment; to reread it is an awakening.
Ulysses is not for everyone. But if one surrenders to it, one is never quite the same again.
P.S. The standard reading time is approximately three months. If you finished it in three days, you have almost certainly missed the point. Kindly begin again — and this time, do try harder.
Kindly remove your hats — and if you’d be so good, your insolence along with them — take a seat, and show the requisite deference, for today is no ordinary day. Today, we turn our attention to one of the grandest literary edifices of the modern age, even if we define said age as beginning the moment Alexandrian grammarians began fussing over breathing marks and accents.
Now that I’ve either secured your attention or sufficiently offended your sensibilities — both acceptable outcomes — let us plunge headlong into the deep end. Let us admit, without prevarication, that Joyce’s Ulysses is not a mere “book” (and I’m not speaking solely of its considerable bulk); it is not, heaven forbid, some chirpy page-turner (a term I have, quite staggeringly, seen applied to it in a “review”) that concludes with a murderous butler or redemptive bromide for sins not worth confessing. No, this is a rite, a mystery, an initiation — and, dare I say, demanding labour. It is not to be read at bedtime, two pages today and five tomorrow. It is to be read with sleeves rolled, with a ban on any individual in heels perambulating noisily about the house, with a carafe of coffee of such potency it would cause a Neanderthal to squint — and an ashtray of a size sufficient to cradle the bones of both Patroclus and Achilles.
How, indeed, to describe a work that is not merely read, but experienced? That eschews narrative in favour of realising an entirely new mode of consciousness, of language, of life itself? Ulysses is not merely a novel; it is a literary megalith, an Odyssean ramble across the psychic map of the human condition, an eighteen-part symphony wherein each note reveals a fresh aesthetic and philosophical unveiling.
Form: The Architecture of Chaos
Ulysses simultaneously deconstructs and reanimates narrative form. From the initial, almost Ibsenian rigour of the first chapter to the untrammelled, torrential consciousness of Molly’s final soliloquy, Joyce redraws the very flow of narrative. Each episode is a stylistic laboratory — now a piece of journalistic reportage, now a mock-theatrical script, now a parody of textbooks, now the thrum of unfiltered thought. Form does not serve the story; form is the story.
Dionysian Linguistics
Language in Ulysses is no mere vehicle — it is the subject of inquiry itself. Joyce stretches English to its absolute limit and then a bit further, coining words, shattering syntactic propriety, and infusing his prose with Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Irish, and sundry tongues, with not a whiff of affectation. His prose is not “difficult” — it is dense, opulent, resonant, a polyphonic terrain demanding the reader’s full engagement. Joyce compels us to ask: what, after all, is Language?
Leopold Bloom: The Ultimate Anti-Hero
Bloom is the modern Odysseus, not because he returns to an Ithaca, but because he survives the indignities of everyday life through a quietly majestic inner generosity. A Jew, an Irishman, a husband — but above all, a human being — Bloom becomes a kind of existential archetype. His day, traced in near-real time, ascends to the level of epic. The morning pork kidney is as sacred as Athena’s spear.
Stephen Dedalus: The Intellectual Prometheus
If Bloom is the heart of Ulysses, Stephen is its feverish intellect. Philosophical, arrogant, vacillating, frightened — Stephen is Joyce’s introspective vessel. Through his monologue we glimpse not only personal trauma but a wider cultural malaise: what does it mean to be Irish after the death of one’s language? To be European after the death of God? To be an artist in a world that demands a bankable skill?
Dublin as Cosmography
Dublin, in Ulysses, is no passive backdrop; it is a protagonist. As London is to Dickens and St. Petersburg to Dostoevsky, so Dublin becomes not merely a city but a multidimensional organism. Joyce does not depict a city — he maps it ethically, psychologically, mythologically. Every alley, every street, every pub, is laden with memory, history, and yearning.
The Mythology of the Everyday
Perhaps Joyce’s most audacious achievement lies in the elevation of the quotidian to the mythic. As Homer sang of kings and warriors, Joyce exalts the petty bourgeois, the stranger, the pedestrian. Bloom is no less heroic than Odysseus (and I’ll not tolerate mutterings about his conduct in the Iliad, where — yes — he was a slippery little bastard). His labours are not martial but psychological, ethical, cultural. The grandeur of Homer is replaced by the humanism of the modern — with no loss of lustre.
The Penelope Chapter: Climax, Catharsis, Liberation
Molly’s voice is the most liberating passage in Western literature. Sans punctuation, sans restraint, sans the pretentious niceties of “literary refinement,” Penelope is the book’s true epiphany. It is a hymn to acceptance, to embodiment, to female experience, to the near-mystical lyricism of yes. Yes I said yes I will Yes — a line that distills the cosmogonic force of desire, love, and presence. Yes, Joyce’s “Penelope” is the first woman in non-“erotic” literature to possess a clitoris.
Conclusion
Ulysses is not merely the greatest work of Anglophone literature — it is the Renaissance of language, the Metamorphosis of form, the Theogony of the modern mind. Each page a mirror of consciousness, each phrase a rite of passage. To read it is not an accomplishment; to reread it is an awakening.
Ulysses is not for everyone. But if one surrenders to it, one is never quite the same again.
P.S. The standard reading time is approximately three months. If you finished it in three days, you have almost certainly missed the point. Kindly begin again — and this time, do try harder.
challenging
slow-paced
Luin viime vuonna Marcel Proustin Kadonnutta aikaa etsimässä -sarjan. Se ja kesäinen kohtaaminen divarissa inspiroivat ostamaan James Joycen Ulysseksen Leevi Lehdon suomennoksena omaan hyllyyn seuraavaksi isoksi lukuprojektiksi. Kun vuosi vaihtui, oli aika tarttua toimeen. Tavoitteenani oli kesyttää Ulysses Bloomsdayhyn eli kesäkuun 16. päivään mennessä. Onnistuin!
Vuonna 1922 ilmestynyt Ulysses on Joycen modernistinen romaaninjärkäle, joka kuvaa kolmen dublinilaisen touhuja 16.6.1904. Isoimmassa osassa on mainosmyyjä Leopold Bloom, hieman pienemmässä osassa Joycen alter ego Stephen Dedalus ja kolmantena sitten Bloomin vaimo Molly, joka häälyy kirjan ajan Leopoldin taustalla, kunnes saa viimeisessä luvussa viimeisen sanan. Suuria asioita kirjassa ei sinänsä tapahdu: Bloom osallistuu hautajaisiin, ostaa saippuaa ja yrittää tehdä työtään. Kirjassa vaelletaan pitkin poikin Dublinia reittejä, joita myöhemmin fanit ovat seuranneet kesäkuussa. (Oivalsin kirjaa lukiessani, että tuona nimenomaisena päivänä Eugen Schauman murhasi Bobrikovin; uutinen välittyy nopeasti, sillä tapahtuma mainitaan Ulysseksessä yhtenä päivän uutisaiheista, toki merkittävästi pienempänä kuin tärkeiden laukkakisojen voittaja.)
Legendan mukaan Joyce itse sanoi laittaneensa kirjaansa niin paljon arvoituksia, että se pitää professorit riitelemässä vuosisatojen ajan siitä, mitä Joyce todella tarkoitti. Niinpä ei kannata odottaa saavansa kaikesta mahdollisesta tolkkua. Nimi viittaa selvästi Odysseukseen: Bloomin matka vertautuu Odysseuksen harharetkiin, Molly on kotona odottava Penelope ja Stephenille on soviteltavissa Telemakhoksen rooli. Myös Hamletiin viitataan jatkuvasti. Paljon on myös puhetta Irlannin ja Englannin välisistä suhteista, jotka olivat kirjan tapahtumien aikaan iso kysymys. Kirjan teemat eivät näihin tietenkään tyhjene: tässä on todella paljon ainesta.
Mikään helppo suomennettava Ulysses ei missään nimessä ole. Ensimmäisenä toimeen tarttui Pentti Saarikoski, jonka suomennos Odysseus ilmestyi vuonna 1964. Se on helposti lähestyttävän näköinen pienempi kirja Lehdon järkälemäiseen Ulyssekseen verrattuna, mutta ei tietenkään erityisemmin uutta suomennosta helppotajuisempi ja yli 700 sivua pientä pränttiä.
Osa suomentamisen vaikeudesta tulee siitä, millaista tyylillistä iloittelua Ulysses on. Jokaisella luvulla on oma kirjallinen tekniikkansa, jota se toteuttaa. Näiden oivaltamisessa on apua Joycen laatimista kaavioista, joissa asiaa avataan. Lehto on liittänyt nämä kaaviot kirjan liitteisiin. Lukeminen on melkoinen matka tyylistä toiseen; kirjan tunnelma vaihtelee villisti. Aina Joycen tyyliä ei pysty suoraan suomentamaan, mutta Lehto on kertonut esipuheessaan pyrkineensä siirtämään tyylikeinoja suomeen. Hyvä esimerkki tästä on 14. luku, joka Joycen alkutekstissä seuraa englanninkielisen kirjallisuuden kehitystä 1200-luvulta 1800-luvun lopulle. Sitähän on mahdoton suoraan suomentaa, joten Lehto on ottanut suomennokseen vaikutteita suomalaisen kirjallisuuden kehityksestä: keskienglantilaista proosaa on korvattu Agricolan raamatunkäännösten tyylillä, keskiaikaisen matkakertomuskokoelman tyyli on Lauri Pietarinpoika Tammeliuksen tyyliä 1600-luvulta, löytyy Gananderia, Juteinia, Lönnrotia ja niin edelleen. Tässä Lehto on tavoittanut alkuteoksen tunnelman Saarikoskea paremmin.
Lehto avaa käännösratkaisujaan esipuheessaan. Yksi silmiinpistävä yksityiskohta on uuden persoonapronominin käyttöönotto. Suomen kielen yksi ”hän” ei ole Lehdolle riittänyt, vaan hän on ottanut käyttöön sukupuolitetut pronominit. Miehet ovat ”hän”, naiset ”hen”. Tämä tuntuu alkuun aivan kummalliselta, mutta käytäntöön tottuu, ja on helppo nähdä, miten moni kohta olisi ollut joko vaikeaselkoisempi tai vaatinut raskaampaa muokkaamista ollakseen selkeä suomeksi. Yleisenä käytäntönä pidän suomen sukupuoletonta ”hän”-pronominia parempana, mutta tässä käännösurakassa olen valmis suomaan tällaisen pienen oikopolun käyttämisen.
Kirjassa on myös runsaasti alaviitteitä. Niissä avataan Joycen kirjoitustekniset teemat, osoitetaan kirjan sisäisiä ristiviittauksia, kerrotaan tapahtumapaikkojen osoitteita, todellisia dublinilaisia henkilöitä, avataan viittaukset Joycen muuhun tuotantoon, siteerataan kreikkalaista Odysseusta, Hamletia ja muita teoksia, kerrotaan historiallista faktaa, osoitetaan missä kohden Joyce on taivuttanut historiaa sopimaan romaaniinsa ja niin edelleen. Suhtautumiseni alaviitteisiin on jakautunut: osa tuntui hyödyllisiltä ja arvokkailta, osa turhilta. Teoksen sisäiset ristiviittaukset olivat vähän yhdentekeviä. Muutamaa seurasin, eikä niistä erityisen syvällisiä oivalluksia herännyt. Käännösratkaisuja ja paikallisia idiomeja selittävät alaviitteet olivat hyödyllisimpiä. Kirjallisuusviitteet antiikin teksteihin olivat vähän siinä ja tässä – usein suhde Ulysseksen ja viitatun tekstin välillä oli tosiaan varsin viitteellinen. Yksityiskohtaisuuden ja paneutuneisuuden tasoa on pakko arvostaa, mutta käytännössä olisi hienoa, jos alaviitteiden tasoa olisi voinut säästää ja piilottaa tietyntyyppiset kokonaan.
Kannattiko lukea? Ulysses lukeutuu näihin kirjallisuuden vaikeisiin merkkiteoksiin ja monelle sen lukemista motivoinee mahdollisuus kehuskella saavutuksellaan. Lukukokemus oli, kuten tämän kokoisessa kirjassa helposti käy, vaihteleva. Toisinaan kirja eteni sujuvammin ja kiinnostavammin, toisinaan lukeminen takkusi eikä edennyt. En pyrkinytkään lukemaan kirjaa kerralla, vaan luin sitä muun lukemisen ohessa. Lopulta kirjan parissa meni nelisen kuukautta. Pahiten takkusi 15. luku, näytelmädialogiksi kirjoitettu bordellikohtaus, jolla on mittaa melkein neljännes koko kirjasta. Joycen tuotannosta kiinnostuneille suosittelen joka tapauksessa aloituskohdaksi vaikkapa Dublinilaisia – se on tuntuvasti lähestyttävämpi. Toisaalta Ulysses on sellainen elämys, ettei vastaavaa ole kirjoittanut kukaan muu, ja teoksella on sen verran paljon kulttuurista painoarvoa, että lukemalla sen pääsee kytkeytymään laajempaan lukijoiden yhteisöön ja fanikuntaan – arvokasta sekin on.
Want to re-read this! but not immediately - to preserve my sanity. Just one of the most brilliantly dense books I have read. Every page demands your utmost attention, which doesn't make it an easy read by any means
I’d have to sacrifice all other reading for at least three months to get through this book