Ulysses

**Ulysses: A Multifaceted Exploration**

Ulysses, written by James Joyce, is a remarkable work that takes place on the 16th of June 1904 in Dublin. In this novel, all possible discourses intersect, alternate, and follow one another like various characters in the city. It's a rich tapestry where the entire universe seems to converge within the span of a single day.

The question of why one should read Ulysses is a valid one. It took the author 6 years to give a conclusive answer to this query. The great virtue of this story is that it polishes the reader's gaze, teaching them to see what they have ceased to look at. It's like life, with its moments of dullness and others that are more lighthearted, and an unexpectedness that can disrupt the ordinary.
Joyce's storytelling is masterful, and in his tales, one can find a wealth of emotions and experiences, such as jubilation, impatience to live, reflection, and even reincarnation. The characters in Ulysses come alive through the voices provided by RTÉ over more than 30 hours of audio, and the pace set by the actors in their reading.
If one had to single out the most appealing aspects of this world-sized book, it would include the luminous prose in Telemaque, the fantasy in Proteus, the everyday language in Calypso, the theoretical and literary discussion in Charybdis and Scylla, the kaleidoscope of the Wandering Rocks, the aimless loitering in Circe, the unexpected meeting of Dedalus and Bloom in Ithaca, and the loose canvas of Penelope's musings.
In conclusion, Ulysses is a book that offers a unique reading experience. It's like life, but in a more profound and engaging way. It challenges the reader and broadens their perspective, and it's a work that will continue to be studied and appreciated for years to come.

A magnificent book, a classic book! I would say the most difficult book of the 20th century for which many struggle to finish or even start. I managed to complete it, and there were moments when I wanted to put it on the shelf and give up. By completing it, I made a promise to myself. To read it again. The promise has been outstanding ever since, and it is on the opposite shelf of the library, as if it is looking at me with a bold gaze.

I read it gradually from the beginning to the end. Each chapter is unique, not only in terms of plot but also in terms of writing. So for those who don't want the difficult ones, they can choose a chapter and read it. That's why I say I will read them again....

Perhaps then, once again immersed in the world of Joyce, I will taste the magic of his writing once more.

My third attempt to read this book was a success. It had been sitting on my currently-reading shelf for 2 years. I read it intermittently as other books came along. First, I read page by page until a quarter of it. I didn't understand the story's direction or what Joyce was trying to convey. So, for the third time, I stopped. My brother asked why, and I told him how difficult and arduous the book was. After he commented that "straining your eyes is not the same as reading," he gave me a copy of The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses by Harry Blamires. With this guide, the reading became enjoyable and the book easier to understand. God bless my brother for rescuing me.

You see, if you check all the best ever novel lists, chances are you'll find this book. It's on the 1001, 501, Modern Library, Metalist, etc. It's even said to be the greatest novel in the English language. For its inventiveness, depth, and complexity, I agree. Inventiveness because it has all the modernist or post-modernist flavors. It has metaphors and references to other brilliant yet challenging works like Homer's Odyssey, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Joyce used his characters to reveal his soul and brain. It's about a day (June 16, 1904, aka "Bloomsday" in England) in the life of Leopold Bloom, a 38-year-old writer whose wife Molly Bloom is having extra-marital affairs and has many admirers or suitors. As the day progresses, as he wanders the streets of Dublin, he passes by a newspaper office, a funeral, a library, several pubs, several churches, a hospital, and a brothel. He also meets the recurring character of Joyce's earlier work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the 22-year-old Stephen Dedalus, who has become the replacement of his dead son Rudy, who died after only a few months of being alive. After Rudy's birth, Leopold and Molly stop having sex.

That's the gist of the story, yet the breath, width, and depth of the narration are astonishing. The Homeric parallelism is astounding. Joyce is said to believe that human behavior, unconsciously drawn from history or myth, endlessly repeats itself. So, Leopold Bloom follows the life of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus is Ulysses' son, Telemachus, and Molly Bloom is the philandering Penelope. The story also heavily tackles the father-son relationship and makes references to the deathless story of Hamlet. The brothel episode quotes heavily from the Wife of Bath episode in Chaucer's Canterbury. "The Cyclops" chapter deals with religion in England during that time and is said to have been written by Joyce while looking at the map of Dublin. It's also where most of his characters appear and has the least Homeric parallelism. "The Circe" chapter is said to be the one that took months for Joyce to write due to the many revisions he made, and it became the most interesting part not only because it has the most Homeric parallelism but also has the most quotable quotes. The last chapter, "Penelope," is not punctuated, and the free-flowing verse reminded me of Jose Saramago's Blindness. So, I take back my earlier admiration for Saramago's trademark. I thought it was an innovative idea until I came to that penultimate chapter of Molly Bloom's beautiful soliloquy.
I know this review doesn't do justice to a staggering book like Ulysses. Suffice it to say that this book is a test of reading endurance. When I finished it, I felt the same way I did when I finished Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace in college, a quarter of a century ago. When I finished that book, I said to myself that I could read anything until my first two attempts to read Ulysses. Now that I'm done with this, my next challenge is to read and finish Proust's Remembrance of the Things Past. If this took me three attempts and 2 years to finish, I'm giving myself 5 years for that work. On second thought, I should get a guide book for that too.
Good luck to me!

**"Ulysses": A Masterpiece Beyond Compare**

From the moment I saw a picture of Marilyn Monroe reading "Ulysses", I was drawn to this novel. I truly love Marilyn, and that's why I fell in love with what she was reading. But when I read it, I looked like this.

T.S. Eliot, in his review of this novel, said that through the use of mythology and the continuous exploitation of the parallel between the modern and the ancient, Mr. Joyce follows a method that others should imitate. It is simply a way of controlling and organizing, adding form and significance to the chaotic and wild scene that the modern history represents. If a literary text could be sanctified, "Ulysses" would be the chosen one.

My God, what can be said about it? What can it not be described as? This is not just a written novel; it's a crafted literary work, carved out of solid rock. The author doesn't just write a simple literary novel to immortalize his name. No, he writes a punishment, a literary punishment for everyone who claims to himself that he is thinking of greatness and innovation. Why, James? Why, my dear? This is us, the majority, and the Bible. What have we done for you to do this to us, and all in your mood? If you want to read it, read it. If you don't, God doesn't burden anyone beyond their capacity. The novel that you may not understand anything from, but as soon as you finish it, you will find a part of yourself in it. It's an extraordinary novel, and if it were to escape from you in part, you would remain imprisoned in its pages and your mind would be attached to it.

You see, my son, in one type of literature, it's nice and easy, and the author from other countries doesn't strain his brain or yours with him. He presents you with the work easily and simply, meaning someone else presents you with the ready-made food and you taste and enjoy it at your leisure. This literature is nice, truly nice, very nice.

And there is another type of literature: it transcends the concept of literature, it transcends all the boundaries and all the standards, to create its own boundaries and standards that no one can approach (and those who try to approach remain). That is, the author doesn't bring you food or even the ingredients, and he tells you to satisfy yourself, my dear. The type of author in it creates a life and a world, a world that he creates, and weaves its details, events, and characters, all from his imagination, all from his creativity. The son of darkness invented a language, the first to claim that he invented a special use of the language, a way, to teach the English. The second type may not find popularity at a certain time, nor find attention or even a following, but it ensures an immortality and a greatness that no other immortality can approach, the greatness of the sacred literary goddess, like the great Olympian gods.

The important thing is that we are facing a work that is described as the greatest throughout the ages, and even this description does not do justice to its greatness and innovation. This work is like no other work, and no other novel can approach its greatness. Is it a novel? And is it really a novel? And what kind of novel is it that requires all the cells of your brain to merge with it and understand it? No, you need all your brain not to lose it and have it scatter from you, so you feel a madness and a confusion that is unrivaled, very logical. When you read this novel, you suddenly close it and start from the beginning again, logical that you read it aloud, and logical that you find yourself laughing loudly and making strange movements. It's a strange novel, and you will have a relationship with it like a love relationship between you and a girl. You will merge with it without any logical reason, and you will encounter difficulties and strange complications but you won't be able to leave it. It's the magic of expression, the magic of the word, and the magic of composition. What is this? What kind of damned spirit possessed Joyce, and what kind of madman visited him to bring out this text for us? What kind of games did this author play so that it could seep into our minds in this way and leave us with this magic?

Carl Jung once sent a letter to Joyce saying, "You, O my Lord, have presented the world as a horribly constipated psychological problem, which I have repeatedly treated with a supposed authority over psychic matters. 'Ulysses' proves to be like an extremely hard nut. Your book as a whole has given me, at last, the solution to a problem on which I have been reflecting for three years until I was able to put myself in confrontation with it. But I must tell you that I feel a deep gratitude towards you - just as towards your great gift - because I have learned a great deal from it. It is possible that I am not sure whether I have enjoyed it; for it was intended to be extremely irritating to the nerves, and also to the grey matter (one of the components of the nervous system). And I also do not know whether what I have written about 'Ulysses' will please you; for it helps to tell the world how I felt the boredom that I felt." And this is Jung, and what about us, the majority? What will happen to us?

The idea is always in human creativity, in his strange and complex mind, in his sacred madness that is capable of astonishing always, and in the simple and complex life of a human being in one moment, one day, one day is the time of this novel. The novel that has confused millions and the world has stood up for it and has not sat down since its day. Its time is one day, with all its details, characters, and stories, with all the scattered thoughts in it, with all the terrifying information mentioned in it, all of this in one day, one day, my believer. Let us live days of suffering just from reading it. What's wrong with the author? He must have lived on June 16th with all these details. He must have known Leopold Bloom, his wife, his friends, and his actions. He must have memorized the entire day. Imagination, my dear, your imagination must be vast enough to approach (just an approach to the imagination of the novel and its author).

The stream of consciousness and its dark years, not the wasteful literature but the difficult-to-understand literature, the one you read and it's not like you've read anything. We must read for something heavy, meaning the stream of consciousness, which requires 1000% concentration from you so that the novel doesn't escape from you and you try to understand it, even though understanding is not important in essence because the novel, before it addresses your mind, addresses your soul and your hidden self.

The language: I have heard a lot about James Joyce's linguistic games, I have heard about his high and amazing sensitivity. But as soon as you face a text like this, you say that there must be something unnatural in it. The Irish author hates the English, so he wanted to surpass them. And what greater superiority is there than to surpass your enemy in his own game? And for this, Joyce innovated in the use of the English language, but not the ordinary traditional use, but a new use that was registered in his name and no one has been able to master or even imitate it since. How many studies have been done on the text and how many attempts to解开 its mysteries, and in the end, all of them have failed. Every chapter, every word, every line, and every sentence has its significance, and that's why we find that the problems of printing never end.

The translation: We have to imagine a translator like Dr. Taha Mahmoud Taha, who dedicated 20 years of his life completely and perfectly to bring out this text for us in our Arabic language. We must thank this man from the bottom of our hearts and feel sorry for him for all the suffering he must have faced during the translation. He was originally planning to do a study on Aldous Huxley, but he fell under the spell of Joyce and "Ulysses" and dedicated himself to it, and visited the places mentioned in an attempt to get closer to its spirit.

"Ulysses" is truly a great novel, and one of the unique novels in the history of the novel. We can say that there was before "Ulysses" and after it. The strange, complex, difficult, and magical text that controls you with all its details. You may not find any pleasure in it, but you will find in it a literary spirit capable of immortality.

June 16, 1904, from 8:00 in the morning to 02:00 at night, a man embarks on a journey of wanderings in Dublin. His encounters and thoughts unfold like a complex tapestry. Like Odysseus lost at sea, he struggles to find his way. The flow of improbable words and streams of consciousness buffet him, causing him to vacillate. The changes of style, with disjointed points of view, along with neologisms and unorthodox phrases, overwhelm him. He risks drowning in this sea of language but persists and resurfaces, one stroke at a time, towards the shore.

The more he progresses, the more he feels like a tiny ant climbing a mountain. Step by step, meter by meter, he ascends without seeing the summit from below. Yet, he proceeds with confidence and boldness, tirelessly. When he finally reaches the top, he looks back and then forward, realizing that the world has irrevocably changed.

To embark on this literary adventure, one must arm oneself with patience and great willpower. Be prepared for change and novelty, as this text is truly unique and unconventional. It presents a multi-level challenge that will test both physical and mental endurance. Each sentence is an exaggerated tribute to excess, a knot that must be untied and overcome. Understanding and following the entire text is nearly impossible, and one is bound to get lost several times. Nevertheless, with great difficulty, I managed to finish the 18 chapters, each a distinct book with its own theme and style.

Judging the classics is always a difficult task, and one risks being labeled a heretic if the judgment does not align with the masses or certified critics. In the case of this text, it demands to be read and re-read, absorbed, and perhaps even studied in-depth with the help of guides and notes. In my partial understanding, I can only applaud unreservedly the extraordinary, boundless, and skilful creative folly that Mr. Joyce has put on paper. This work is truly unique and revolutionary, shining with its own absolute light among the classics.

Give it a try. Maybe you won't like it, finding it largely incomprehensible or simply leaving it to gather dust after a few pages. It doesn't matter, for you will hardly find anything similar. Be prepared for a journey into the highest levels of experimenting with the art of writing. It offers limitless joy and sorrows for the reader. You have been warned. Some works transcend genres and personal tastes, going beyond the ordinary.

This has been an unsettling and amazing experience for me. It has aroused my curiosity to persevere, despite the extreme difficulty, to discover what the next sentence and the author's ingenious madness will offer. From now on, modernism has James Joyce's Ulysses as a reference for me, and in all frankness, it may be enough. It is too far from my preferences, so I happily return to dreaming and being enraptured by the imagination of more congenial genres, where perhaps I can even understand what I read. Linguistic experiments are only interesting when they are short; the rest is for enthusiasts and lovers of exaggeration. Joyce probably still laughs at it all.

It was neither the best of times, nor the worst of times.

16th June 1904. Just another ordinary day when ordinary Dubliners go about their everyday lives. Bloom carries the ever-present feeling of sadness stashed away in a corner, politely answering each "how are you" with an "I am fine." Stephen continues to drift without direction, the sorrow of parental death hovering over him. A day witnesses a birth and a death, romance and infidelity, tenderness and hostility, fear and bravery, drinking and merrymaking, and drinking in despair. There are intellectual discussions and crude jokes, and plenty more. For, couldn't pieces from several ordinary lives come together to form a kaleidoscope, offering a peek into various facets of life, if you look far and wide enough? Why would there need to be a hero-villain duo for there to be a story worth telling, when an everyman has both a bit of a hero and a bit of a villain within himself?

16th June 1904. Thanks to Joyce, this ordinary day has since gained a special status, and rightfully so. I am not one to believe in such a thing as a must-read. But until reading Ulysses, I didn't really know what I had been missing. I can't come up with any number of books that put together could match the experience of reading Ulysses. Joyce contorts the English language in forms that hadn't been imagined possible. It becomes undeniably clear why Ulysses enjoys the position and reputation it has in English literature.

But more than the influential position, what warrants reading Ulysses is that it's such a blast to read. Immensely rich and rewarding. It's almost surprising how (re)readable and even unputdownable this book is, and how poignant it can be despite the difficulty of the prose. Even the moments where the language seems to keep you at an arm's distance at first, can move you in unexpected ways. The way Joyce puts the reader in the minds of the characters gives one far more intimate familiarity with them than any amount of descriptions would. There is some very captivating writing to be encountered in here. Ulysses would give you heavy, brain-flexing dialog, as well as childish humor, and everything else in between. And plenty of that is left for me to unearth on re-readings. And reread it I will....yes I will Yes.

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Bonus link: Ulysses Seen

I never expected that I would enjoy reading "Ulysses" so much. That there would be moments when I would laugh so hard. On the other hand, I was sure that there would be moments when I would want to throw the book out of the window and forget about its existence, and there were many such moments. Shame on you, Joyce, how many times did you make me exclaim what a genius you are and how many times did I curse you!

I started reading it with great anxiety, and the reading guide by Marangopoulos helped me a lot to overcome my fear and enjoy the book for the most part.

I read it simultaneously in Greek and English because I wanted to have as complete a picture as possible and not miss anything from Joyce's amazing game with language. The annotations in the Greek edition of Kaktsos were also very helpful, without which I would have to mumble constantly and not get anything out of it.

My favorite chapters were:

1) "Proteus" which drew me into Stephen's stream-of-consciousness and charmed me so much that I stopped thinking about whether I understood and what I understood.

2) "Sirens" which, after I read it twice, needed to be heard read by many different voices for everything to fall into place. There, where everything seemed so confused, suddenly I found myself in the bar and was following everything, the thoughts, the words, the movements of each one. Incredible.

3) "Penelope". Molly Bloom with her temper won me over, made me forget the lack of punctuation in this stormy monologue and made me laugh, so I loved her.

I liked the chapter "Aeolus" less, and I didn't like the chapter "Ithaca" at all, which tired me incredibly with its scientific-encyclopedic tone.

Now, "Oxen of the Sun" ... Here there is no I liked/didn't like. Here there is the FOULEST CURSED BLOOD! What was that? When I finished it, I felt as if the oxen had passed over me. Especially at the beginning, I didn't understand anything. I think that without the reading guide, the only thing I would understand from this chapter is that someone was giving birth and some people were eating tinned sardines. It was the only chapter where I felt so desperate that I was looking for annotations even on the Internet to be able to follow it. What he did, this change of tone and language so many times, is amazing, but just thinking about it makes me want to cry.

I'm very glad that I made the decision and read it, even if it tired me in some places and made me suffer in others, because for the most part I enjoyed the book and I believe that it's worth the effort and a little suffering if you want to read such a work.

4.5* due to the mental pain, dear author.

Second time reading, this time after having swum in the Wake. I was fortunate enough to time it with handing in my notice at work and having very little work to do. This allowed for at least 2 or 3 extra hours of reading a day. I adored every single word of it. It's a bawdy, bloody-buggering-bollocking bomb of a book. An anti-colonial uprising, a giant "fuck you" to England and the English literary tradition.

I suspect that one of the factors determining whether you'll love dear old dirty Jamesy is whether you find the following letter he wrote to Nora beautiful, tender, and full of love and joy.

To NORA
Dublin 2 December 1909
………………………….
My love for you allows me to do many things. It allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes. Or it allows me to fling you down under me on that soft belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse. It allows me to burst into tears of pity and love at a slight word, to tremble with love for you at the sounding of a chord or cadence of music. Or to lie heads and tails with you, feeling your fingers fondling and tickling my ballocks or stuck up in me behind and your hot lips sucking off my cock while my head is wedged in between your fat thighs, my hands clutching the round cushions of your bum and my tongue licking ravenously up your rank red cunt.

I love the honest, open, unashamed ejaculation (pun intended) of these letters. I love that they remain exquisitely crafted despite clearly being written with only one hand.

And we shouldn't forget that Bloomsday was the day of Nora and James' first date to Ringsend. That evening, she... well, I'll quote the old fella himself in his recounting of it.

What other lover has ever received such an homage, a gift, as Nora? Of course, those gender theorists who tell us that man writes with semen and woman with milk will find ironic humor in such an origin for such an allegedly onanistic text. But for me, this book is all about the other, all about us. There's nothing narcissistic or self-absorbed about it.

The body and its natural functions cannot be obscene, immoral, or depraved. Bloom's morning shit is a thing to be gazed at clearly, lovingly, and without blinking. Our sexual desires, our brief flashes of socially inappropriate thought, cannot be ignored if "realism" is the goal.

And who can show these truths to us? It is Bloom, the Irish Jew, the clearly non-heteronormative male, the feminist, the critiquer of the Patriarchy and colonialism, Bloom the speaking Subaltern. Is there a better, richer, profounder character in all of literature?

All of Being is here, writ large and beautiful and bold. It is a Love-story, in that it is both about Love and filled with it - romantic love, sexual love, familial love, love of nation, of race, love of food and of bodily functions, love of self, love of the sound of one's own voice. And it is an act of love, in the writing and the giving of it. It is romantic but not idealistic, it is of love as a fact and not an illusion.

It is also the only work of art since that of Shakespeare to perfectly combine the highbrow with the low, to join seamlessly and without judgment fart jokes and philosophy. Woolf, bless her slightly snobbish heart, was simply too prudish to ever attempt such a thing. That's why, much as I love her, Joyce is the superior artist.

Just briefly regarding "difficulty" - I think both the Oxen of the Sun and the Circe episodes are "difficult" only if one thinks one needs to clearly understand what the hell is going on all the time. Circe in particular is meant to be confusing as we are floating about in a drunken subconscious. The emotional content is the point here. Just go with it and wait for those flashes of clarity so you know where Bloom and Stephen are and just enjoy the language and the humor and the exploration of repression and desire. This book should be read as a page-turner, as a riotous, joyful explosion of words. I personally don't think annotations are the way to go. Perhaps one of those paragraph overviews of "what is happening in the chapter" is probably all you need. Bloom is quite capable of breaking your heart even if you don't get the Latin references.

Get a paperback you don't mind beating the crap out of. Carry it round, spill booze on it, read it on the bus, in your bed, in a park, in a pub. Read it and sing it and swim in it and live in it. Study it later, but read it now. This is not a book to be worshiped on high, but one to be rolled around with in the dirt.