Stately? Plump?

Ulysses fans will recognize the title of today's post (minus the question marks) as the first words of the first chapter of the novel, and today was dedicated to the beginning of the book. 

There I stood, at the Martello tower in Sandycove, several miles south of Dublin, where Joyce stayed for a few nights and turned his experience into the setting for the scene where Buck Mulligan and Stephen (the author's alter ego) talk at the top of the tower. 

The view is spectacular, of course, and it also revealed something I hadn't known before, something I could have learned only by making this journey. From the tower, the setting for the first moments of the book, at 8:00A.M. on June 16, 1904, there's a splendid view of Howth (over my left shoulder), the site of yesterday's visit and the setting being imagined by Molly as the day and the novel come to a close.  Even at the beginning, then, of this monster of a novel, the end is quite literally in sight. 

Of course, to be absolutely truthful, my day didn't quite follow Joyce's schedule, as you might have noticed from the clothing from the two photos. After Stephen and "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan" talk at the tower's top and then have breakfast below, 

in a room where I asked some nice French people (in French) to take my picture,

 Mulligan takes a morning swim. Stephen, who avoids water, does not, but he does accompany Mulligan to the beach. So, at about 8:30 this morning (just about when it happens in the book) Robert (my host) and I joined the brave and the crazy at the Forty Foot,

which (fortunately) isn't a 40-foot plunge, but is instead probably named for a regiment that was stationed there. 

It was very very cold, but a pilgrimage is pilgrimage. 

Mulligan refers to the sea as "our great sweet mother," citing Homer's "epi oinopa ponton" or "wine dark sea."  He then changes the color to "snotgreen," and discusses the cold water in ways that many readers of this blog have already mentioned to me.  I will make no comment, except to repeat that it was very very cold indeed. 

After breakfast, then, I returned to the tower and visited the small and charming museum. Like the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum in Cooperstown, the Joyce Museum at Sandycove had nothing that I didn't want to see, from letters and poems in Joyce's handwriting to the key to the tower that figures so significantly in the chapter and introduces a theme that is key (yeah, I said it) to the rest of the book. 

They even had a jar of Plumtree's Potted Meat, a detail Joyce just can't leave alone throughout the novel.

As the sun warmed the waters and less courageous swimmers began to fill the swimming area beneath the tower, 

I continued my journey.  Later in the day, Robert and I returned to collect a final detail for the chapter. Here's how Joyce finishes things, with Stephen (as Joyce himself did in1904, though not on June 16th) deciding to leave the tower:  

I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.

A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far out on the water, round.

Usurper.

And, after we waited for about 10 minutes, here he was, just for me: a seal. I promise that's a seal in the photo. Really. Zoom in. 

From there, I made my way a few miles north toward the city to Sandymount Strand, where lots of very healthy Irish people were out jogging with the dual purposes of fitness and photo bombing my selfies. Stephen, in the third chapter of Ulysses, strolls on Sandymount Strand, at one point closing his eyes as he walks. He worries while walking in the dark, though not about stumbling:

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

My worries, as I did the same (of course I, who cut across traffic, walked with my eyes closed!), were a bit less philosophical. 

My fear was that one of those swift Irish runners would steal my cell phone while it was taking pictures of me walking with my eyes closed. Like Stephen, I opened my eyes with some trepidation. The result?

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.

I'm not sure my iPhone will last quite that long, but I was relieved, as Stephen probably was too, and as you may well be to see the end of this post. Thanks for being my unseen readers. 

dml